Rich: Surely one reason the fighting fizzled out last week was that the Iraqis don’t have much in the way of war materiel. Nothing much to fight a civil war with.

But… isn’t it our aim to get fully-equipped Iraqi forces up and running?

When we do — when, for example (to take one possible benchmark) the Iraqi armed forces are sufficiently well-trained and -equipped to deter a threat from Iran, they will be sufficiently well-trained and -equipped to fight a civil war if they choose to.

Which, based on last week’s events, they very well might.

Talk about having a tiger by the tail!