Transcript
Kenneth Pollack: I think that in many ways the events of last week are extremely important. As I think some of you know, I’ve been running around for months now screaming about the south and no one’s paying attention to the south and we need to pay attention to the south. And I’d like to say that what happened last week needs to be a wake up call, and I hope that it will be a wake up call and will really illustrate the problems that are lying out there in Southern Iraq.
Everyone was focused on what has happened in the northern half of the country. Everyone is focused on the impact of the surge and the surge strategy on the Sunni communities of Iraq. What they’ve missed is the impact that the surge and the surge strategy have had on the Shia communities of Iraq. And in some ways there has been a very significant impact. In other ways, there has been no impact at all and it’s the intersection of those two sets of problems which is what’s causing the tensions, the frictions, what you saw spilling over last week.
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