General Abizaid testifies before Senate Armed Services Committee, states “Iraq could move toward civil war.”

By Brendan Smith
brendansmith@transworldnews.com

Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday and expressed his fear that Iraq is heading towards civil war.

The general stated “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular. And that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war”

Violence between Sunnis and Shiites has escalated to an unforeseen level since the February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. According to a U.N. report, an average of over 100 Iraqi civilians have been killed in daily sectarian attacks since May.

It is the fighting between the two major religious sects that Abizaid feels needs to be addressed. The environment created by internal strife has made Iraq a prime target for outside groups to implement their nefarious plans. Abizaid explained to the committee his belief that “As the primary security problem in Iraq has shifted from a Sunni insurgency to sectarian violence, al Qaeda terrorists, insurgents and Shia militants compete to plunge the country into civil war.”

With Baghdad being the center of so much sectarian violence, the transition into a democratic government has become increasingly harder to fathom.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed his belief that the job of stopping sectarian violence falls on the Iraqi forces, not the U.S., but maintained the removal of U.S. troops must be based on evolving conditions.

Those evolving conditions are not yet present according to Rumsfeld, “If we left Iraq prematurely as the terrorists demand, the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us and all those who don't share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.”

General Abizaid clearly defined what he felt were the three objectives in dealing with the Middle East, defeating al Qaeda; deterring Iran; and developing a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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