And since we overthrew the dictator who was running the place, I guess we'll have to let it fall into regions via bloody local wars, executions, and humanitarian crisis

No, quite frankly there's a LOT of things we could have done - and a lot of things we could have not done - to escape the current situation.

- We could have NOT supported Saddam all through the 80's.
- We could have NOT imposed crushing, borderline genocidal sanctions against the Iraqi people that utterly failed to impact the government elite.
- We could have either NOT encouraged a Shiite uprising in 1991, OR we could have followed our promise to back it.
- For that matter, maybe we shouldn't have given Saddam a green light on Kuwait.
- Maybe we shouldn't have invaded in 2003.
- Maybe when we did, our priority should have been transfer of power in a peaceful manner rather than standing by, letting desperate peopel loot everything, ignore the rise of militancy, all while posting hundreds of guards around the Oil Ministry offices.
- Not arming and training the militants now attacking in Iraq would have been a good idea.

Yes, let's ignore the last thirty years of history and just pretend it's some unique and inherent Iraqi flaw.

I have no idea why you would just assume something like that.

And you say,

oil; 3. See: Yugoslavia, the Former.

is democratic.

adequate rights and political power.

solutions are unlikely

was around 950 AD.

they had a serge of enlightenment and science and math developed/studied big time

I'm sure that didn't help.

Georgie cabal really fecked it up by going into Iraq and destroying the Sunni secularists and now you are witnessing the Sunni fundies at work and oh how they play..indeed, heads will role and they are proving that, literally.

Are the ones screaming for more blood...wish i was religious so I believed in heaven and hell and I knew what awaited those tools.

Which is why the USA needs to just stay out of Iraq.

It's nice to have a thread once in a while where everyone seems to agree.

That worked really well.

Common mistake.

Europe JUST decided to take a few years' breather from its four-thousand year history of tribal and sectarian warfare and genocide - to say nothing of what those people have been doing around the rest of the world!

By comparison to Europe, Mesopotamia and the territory around it has been pretty damned stable and peaceful for the last 1300 years.

if Iraq had a democratic election, Saddam Hussein would win.

At best we could establish a forum where new national boundaries are established.

But that's not going to happen so long as we think the oil belongs to our imaginary "free" market.

We royally screwed the place up. We bear some responsibility for trying to fix it.

Those are our options.

But as far as I can see they don't have any.

It's a set of regions cobbled together by the British.

Madness and hubris.