"I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic. But it will be ugly," - retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who conducted war games for the Pentagon to predict what would happen in the event of a US withdrawal from central Iraq. The three main scenarios:
Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations.
Perhaps it should have happened a long time ago. More pertinent:
The games also predicted that Iran would intervene on one side of a Shiite civil war and would become bogged down in southern Iraq.
To my mind, using our exit to make life extremely hard for Tehran should be a main objective. Along with saving Kurdistan.