Paul Craig Roberts Echoes Me

Paul Craig Roberts writes in Counterpunch:

"Considering reports that 80% of Sunnis support the insurgency passively if not actively, it looks as if extermination of Sunnis will be required if the US is to achieve "victory" in Iraq."
(Also posted here and here).

Reminds me of another writer, a nice formerly be-sideburned fellow:

"When it comes to the point where we have to start drawing down our troops or else re-institute a draft, expect to see whole villages being razed every time there is an attack against our troops." May 29, 2005

"If we get to the point where we rally start losing control, we will find a way to maintain control with the forces we have. Which is a nice way of saying that we will ge significantly more brutal. To put down the Sunni insurgency, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a resort to concentration camps and mass executions." May 27, 2005

"No, I'm not advocating this; but I think that if the US has its back to the wall, sooner or later it will be decided that increased brutality to the Sunnis will force them to submit. And if regular brutality doesn't work, perhaps razing villages to the ground, punishing the families of insurgents, or concentration camps for the Sunni Arabs will be used." May 26, 2005

"I have said many times that I think that our distaste for ruthlessness will melt away given sufficient time with little progress, and given a refusal to withdraw. If we refuse to lose in Iraq, and we cannot seem to defeat the insurgency, I think that eventually the push to take off the gloves will become irresistible." May 24, 2005

"Of course, there is probably a way that Bush can avoid cutting benefits and still get his accounts. Higher taxes. Just like there is a way that he can keep control of Iraq without a draft. Mass murder of Sunnis. In both cases, I am less than thrilled by the prospect." April 29, 2005

"Because the only way to end it with the army we currently have is to simply start wiping out the ethnic groups most associated with the resistance, i.e. the Sunni Arabs." March 7, 2005

"Ultimately a rising tide of casualties will either become so unpopular that we will withdraw or the commanders will get so frustrated that we will engage in genocide to avoid withdrawing." January 14, 2005

"In any case, from the tone that Krauthammer took, I am afraid that if the elections don't work out well for the Sunnis that we are looking at a protracted war with them - and ultimately I think that there may be a move toward heavy oppresssion of them." December 27, 2004

I also made predictions relating to Fallujah (among other predictions) last October here and here, which you will have to judge the turthfulness of for yourselves, but which generally suggested that we would countenance much more brutality toward recalcitrant groups, such as the Sunnis.

So in short, the idea that the US is beginning to go into open war with the Iraqi Sunni Arabs (not with Sunni Kurds or Turkomen) is something that I have been saying for a while now, and Paul Craig Roberts is agreeing with me.

That is all.