IRAQ

In my posting of 10th July I predicted that the upcoming Saturn-Neptune Opposition - which has its first crossing on 31/8/6 - could well reflect a wider political acknowledgement of the hopelessness of the situation in Iraq. The fact that the situation is hopeless is something everyone has been able to see for some time, but to admit it would have major and unnacceptable political fallout for our leaders. So we have been living for some time in this make-believe world where Bush and Blair talk-up Iraq as a long-term democratic prospect.

In the last few days the outgoing British ambassador to Baghdad, free to speak his mind, said that the most likely outcome for Iraq was civil war and a break-up of the country along ethnic lines. A couple of US Generals backed this opinion. And then Tony Blair made a speech in which he said that the current strategy in the War on Terror isn't working, and that a new strategy is needed.

We still have over 3 weeks until the 1st Saturn-Neptune Opposition, so watch this space! The whole Iraq episode has been so traumatic and so divisive, and it could help a lot to have a bit of truth in the air. It could even domino into some sort of acknowledgment of what went on around the original pretext for war, which was the 'sexed-up' evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. But this would definitely have to be post Bush and post Blair. I think there will be a good deal of political bloodletting to be done around Iraq sooner or later.

I have to admit that before the war I took the view that for the sake of the Iraqis, Saddam needed to be got rid of, and if Rottweiler Bush was the only means available, then so be it. I wasn't aware of the lack of planning about what to do next, or the strength of sectarian divisions.

The USA officially handed over power to a new Iraqi government on 28 June 2004 at 10.26am in Baghdad. (NB Iraq was on Summer Time, ie plus 1 hour). This gives a chart for the current US backed Iraqi government, as well as for the current incarnation of Iraq (countries can have a number of charts as they 're-incarnate' over time - e.g. the UK 1066 Chart, and the 1801 Union with Scotland Chart). What leaps out is the Grand Trine between the Sun, Moon and Angular Uranus. This is not a stable situation! And then there is the square from Jupiter in Virgo to Pluto in Sagittarius - religious fundamentalism which feeds the instability, through Jupiter's Opposition to Uranus.

Old Iraq: 14th July 1957, 7am, Baghdad.

The composite chart between the old and new Iraqs has Uranus on the MC at the apex of a Yod with Neptune and Pluto. This is quite remarkable. It is as if there were something deeply fated about this transition and the invasion which brought it about. Certainly Bush, and by all accounts Dick Cheney, were obsessed with it. But it's like they were the tools of some far bigger picture - I mean, Angular Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in a Yod! - that concerns the fate of the whole world, for better or for worse. Oil is fundamental to the modern world, the Middle East is fundamental to the supply of oil, and the Iraq War has lit up a powder keg across the whole region at a time when the long-term future of the oil supply is uncertain. It's like this war marked the painful beginning of the transition to a new age for all of us, or something like that.

I've sometimes thought that in a perverse kind of way it is a good thing that the USA has a President like Bush at the current time. The upcoming square of Uranus to Pluto in just a few years, that hits the charts of all the major powers in a big way over the succeeding years (similarly to the late 1920s/early 1930s), will be a crucial time of transition for the world. What will be needed perhaps more than anything during this period is a moderate and restrained (relatively speaking!) America. With any luck, there will be a backlash against the US neo-cons in the 2008 election that may provide the sort of intelligent and moderate US President that the world will need at that time.