From Janes Defense Weekly:
After Saddam is defeated: a confidential American projection of a new Middle East
If the Western media and armchair generals are to be believed, the impending war against Iraq will be disastrous. The world oil price will rise and financial markets will remain wobbly. The backlash against the US and its allies will be huge, perhaps toppling pro-Western monarchies and governments in the Gulf and Middle East.
This is the received wisdom of the critics. Foreign Report has had access to the thinking of advocates in the Bush administration about the US intervention in Iraq. Although the risks inherent in any war cannot be overlooked, the critics may exaggerate the dangers and underestimate the advantages for the entire Middle East should the operation go well.
At the outset, remember who the critics are. They are the people who predicted Armageddon in all recent conflicts. The critics claimed a decade ago that the war to remove Saddam from Kuwait would last 'for decades'; its most intensive phase lasted less than a month. They also said that 'huge numbers' of Western soldiers would be killed. In fact, hundreds died. They predicted that Saddam's Republican Guards would 'fight to the end'; in fact, they ran away.
Could the critics be wrong again?
Saddam Hussein is not Bin Laden. He is a classic dictator, dependent on the apparatus of a state, a disciplined security service and a small clan of his own people, the Takritis, who are despised by most ordinary Iraqis, not to speak of other Arabs in the Middle East. When his regime begins to collapse, he will be finished.
