According to most media commentators on the Washington movers and shakers, the largest and most dominant question of 2004 will be how to extract Amercian forces from the war-torn, medieval mess that Iraq has become.

Leslie Gelb, a former chairman of the United States Council on Foreign Relations has claimed in the New York Times, that the solution is to split Iraq into three seperate states. The plan is, to quote from an extract of an article by the ever intrepid Robert Fisk, that:

"America should create three mini-states in Iraq - Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the centre and Shias in the south - the frontiers of these three entities drawn along ethnic, sectarian lines. The "general idea," says Mr Gelb, "is to strengthen the Kurds and Shias and weaken the Sunnis." Thus US forces can extricate themselves from the quagmire of the "Sunni triangle" while the "troublesome and domineering" Sunnis themselves - with no control over Iraq's northern or southern oil fields - will be in a more moderate frame of mind."

This is truly horrifying stuff. Not content with selling off Iraq's soverign rights to their own oil, electricity and energy etc, it now appears that elements of the far-right think tanks who have a strong influence on the current White House thinking are suggesting that the country be hacked to pieces in order to suit the business interests of a small cabal of already filthy rich industrialists who have absolutely no right whatsoever to tell any Iraqi how to live his life.

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