Alguns excertos:
"For each American soldier capable of going out on patrol or fighting insurgents, there are five support troops supplying his needs, according to an Army spokesman. In other words, of the roughly 130,000 American troops in Iraq today, only about 25,000 are combat troops."
(...)
"If Iraq shatters, the Bush administration will be faced with four choices: (1) Try to stop the civil war. (That would involve sending a lot more troops, which seems politically out of the question.) (2) Pick one side and fight alongside it. (Several senior U.S. officers, including two generals, told me they can’t imagine a president going this route.) (3) Get out quickly. (4) Hunker down, and stay neutral, till the smoke clears."
(...)
"The easier option, though, would be to hunker down—especially since we’re doing that already."
(...)
"But if things fall apart, the political trick will be to make a case that the mission still makes sense. It would be hard to justify a massive force that just sits there, but an argument could be made for a stripped-down core of 30,000 troops. If all-out civil war erupts, Iraq’s neighbors may feel compelled to step in, for reasons of security or aggrandizement—Iran on the side of Shiites, Saudi Arabia backing Sunnis, Turkey quashing the Kurds. The United States would be foolish to get militarily involved in an ethno-regional conflict, but it could help deter or mediate one—and having some troops on the ground, and planes in the air, creates diplomatic leverage. "
Post de José Vítor Malheiros publicado no blog "Em Revista", do jornal Público, em 13 de Junho 2006: http://em-revista.blogspot.pt/2006/06/o-dilema-americano-no-iraque.html
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