Gaming Iraq's future

Rolling Stone magazine put together an all-star intelligence panel (Zbigniew Brzezenzki, Richard Clarke, Michael Scheuer, Nir Rosen and others) to figure out what would be the Best Case Scenario in Iraq, the Worst Case Scenario, and What's Likely to Happen. Read the results here. Here's Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden desk, on the best case:

No matter what happens now, the Islamists will have beaten both of the superpowers -- first the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and now the United States in the heart of Islam. The impact of that in Islamic civilization is going to be enormous. We have made bin Laden a prophet: His organizing concept for Al Qaeda was "The Russians are a lot tougher than the Americans. If we can beat the Russians, then we can eventually beat the Americans." Even more important, Al Qaeda will have contiguous territory on the Arab peninsula to attack from.

Here's Gen. Tony McPeak (ret.), former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Most Likely scenario:

We're going to see a full-scale intercommunal war that may not burn out until one side is all dead, all gone. The Kurds would like to sit on the sidelines, but I don't see how they stay out, especially up in the Kirkuk area, where they sit on a lot of oil. This is going to be ethnic cleansing like we had in Kosovo or Bosnia -- but written big, in capital letters. And we can't stop it.

Here's Nir Rosen on the worst-case scenario:

Iraq will be the battleground where the Sunni-Shia conflict will be fought, but it won't be limited to Iraq. It will spread. Pandora's box is open. We didn't just open it, we opened it and threw fuel into it and threw matches into it. You'll soon see Sunni militias destabilizing countries like Jordan and Syria -- where the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is very strong. It took about ten years for the Palestinians to become politicized and militarized when they were first expelled from Palestine. You're likely to see something like that occurring in the huge Iraqi refugee populations in Syria and Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan is resented for being an American stooge and an accomplice with Israel. I'm convinced that the monarchy in Jordan will fall as a result of this, and Israel will be confronted with a frontline state on its longest border with an Arab country.

You're going to see borders changing, governments falling. Lebanon is already on the precipice. Throughout the region, government officials are terrified. Nobody knows how to stop it. This is World War III. How far will it spread? Anywhere there are Islamic movements, like in Somalia, in Sudan, in Yemen. Pakistan has always had Sunni-Shia fighting. The flow of Iraqi refugees will at some point affect Europe.

How bad do you think it will be? Pessimist that I am, I think it's going to be massive regional warfare, which will inflame the Islamic populations of Europe, causing violence and civil unrest in European capitals. How it ends, I have no idea.

But I will say this: I think come late 2008, we're all going to be pining for a time when we had the luxury to take into consideration a presidential candidate's stand on abortion.