Ralph Peters, Intelligence Specialist

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer and New York Post pundit advocates the hyper-balkanisation of the Middle East:

‘A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq's three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenicia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.’

- ‘Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look’, Armed Forces Journal, June 2006. http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

His expertise is illustrated by the statements he made after a visit to Baghdad in March:

'During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

'No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.

'I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.

'Much could still go wrong. The Arab genius for failure could still spoil everything. We've made grave mistakes. Still, it's difficult to understand how any first-hand observer could declare that Iraq's been irrevocably"lost"'
- ‘Myths of Iraq’, RealClearPolitics, 14 March 2006. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/myths_of_iraq.html

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Now, 7 months later...

'But remaining in Baghdad requires a new sense of reality. "Stay the course" is meaningless when you don't have a course - and the truth is that the administration still doesn't have a strategy, just a jumble of programs, slogans and jittery improvisations.

'Our Army and Marine Corps urgently need increases in personnel strength. They've been stripped to the strategic and tactical bone. We need more boots. But not on the ground in Iraq.

'Sending more troops wouldn't help and can't be done. It's too late. We've reached the point where Iraqis must fight for their own future. If they won't, nothing we can do will bring success...

'Give them [the Iraqis] one more year. And that's it.

Meanwhile, the notion of sending more U.S. troops is strategic and practical nonsense. Had the same voices demanded another 100,000-plus troops in 2003 or even 2004, it would have made a profound, positive difference. Now it's too late.

- ‘No More Troops, New York Post, 10 October 2006. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/myths_of_iraq.html

Harlan Ullman, Strategoi

2003:

According to the architect of "Shock and Awe", military strategist Harlan Ullman, the plan would rely on an extensive array of precision-guided weapons.

"We want them to quit, not to fight," Ullman said, "so that you have this simultaneous effect - rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima - not taking days or weeks but minutes."

The main objective was not just to disable Iraq's fighting capacity but to leave the population dispirited and unwilling to support Saddam's regime.

"You're sitting in Baghdad and, all of a sudden, you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out," Mr Ullman said. "You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."

- Andrew West, ‘800 missiles to hit Iraq in first 48 hours’, Sun Herald, 26 January 2003.

2006:

HARLAN ULLMAN: We lost control of events on the ground probably in April or May of 2003. And it's taken a long time for that recognition to dawn in the White House. The President and the administration has refused to recognise reality.

Iraq is a disaster. It is a disaster at every level, and to think that they've got a functioning government and to think that the situation is better today than it was in 2003 or 2004, or 2005, is unbelievable.

We have a catastrophe on our hands and of course we've got to make course corrections and the only guy in town who seems not to be able to recognise that, sadly, is the President. It's just not conceivable, it is not feasible, probably in our lifetime. We should have understood that from the beginning, but we haven't, and what we have to do now is limit the damage in Iraq, so it does not spill over the borders and create a further catastrophe in the Middle East, which we cannot contain.

- Transcript, 'The World Today - US has lost control in Iraq, says military strategist’, ABC Online, 19 October 2006.