Iraq Jittery over Saddam Verdict
Dozens of Sunnis killed by Police Commandos
Special Police Commandoes killed 53 al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq on Saturday, according to Iraqi officials. Or you could say that Shiite death squads infiltrated into the special police commandos killed 53 Sunni Arab guerrillas.
Just to make sure everyone is unhappy all at once, the Shiites of Sadr City faced a bombing and a US raid on a Mahdi Army office. Al-Hayat [Life] [Ar.] reports that 20 other Iraqis, at least, were killed on Saturday.
Guerrillas struck at the bodyguards of Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani on Friday night. When the president isn't safe, no one is.
Major Sunni Arab cities have been put under curfew in expectation of social violence when it is announced Sunday that Saddam Hussein will be executed.
Ahmed Amr on Bush's surrender to the Iraqi death squads.
Pentagon War Games in 1999 concluded that at least 400,000 US troops would be needed to secure Iraq in the event of an invasion, and that even that number might not be enough. D'oh.
The normative foundations of the Pakistani military regime's cooperation with the US in the 'war on terror' were laid bare by the Pakistani foreign minister. He admitted that if Pakistan had not turned its back on the Taliban, and if it had defied the US in the war on terror, than what happened to Iraq would have happened to Pakistan.
Seniors have turned against Bush on Iraq and many who voted Republican in 2004 are saying they will vote Democrat this year. They actually vote, so this will make a difference.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/05/2006 12:31:00 AM
|
Facebook
5 Comments:
They can lock down Bagdad for a few hours or a day or two but the curfew has to be lifted eventually
and when it is things will simply go back to "normal". I don't think the verdict will make a big difference.
Maybe the violence will surge afterwards but overall there won't be much change, not due to Saddam's
trial verdict anyway. He's really just become a side note in the on going saga of Iraq's horror story.
Saddam has at last been sentenced to death by hanging. The Americans thought they could milk the trial to demonstrate the rule of law. They prolonged the hopes of the Tikritis and piled on more death and misery in the now lawless land.
Millions witnessed the crimes of this savage and the trial should not have lasted more than weeks.
The question now is: would the new savages the Americans put on top of the Iraqi society get their just punishment too? Will there be any Iraqis left to witness it?
Since 2004, I have heard many of my mom's elderly friends just BLAST Bush. Now, my mom is probably one of 3 democrats in a tiny town in rural Apalachia. So, these are life-long, elderly Republicans who are angry. Her brother in-law even used the phrase "Lying bastards" in 2004, utterly shocking me (he's a life-long Republican). What they are MOST upset about is the war, the senseless slaughter, maiming, and waste.
Gonna be a very interesting Tuesday.
War Games
Duh ... it don't matter none what the war games tells us; it's all in the feudin' that makes all the difference.
It might be a monotonous -- almost cacophonous -- statement that the events in Iraq come down to a personal vendetta against the Iraqis' former leader (at least until he is "legally" terminated) waged by the various Buscist factions, one employing the various Zionistas and "Christianoids" as allies, not so much for any other shared objective than to depose Saddam Hussein. While the essential personal element of Buscist hatred for Hussein is prominent, every other rationale was substituted, subterraneanised, submerged in favour of achieving the one true goal. The "mission" was indeed "accomplished" as soon as Hussein went on the lam, with no other plan or objective stated except when it became apparent that the problems were a little more complex once the verdetta was completed, including the demises of Uday and Qusay as retribution for the supposed attempts on the Bush family members' lives, a possible retaliatory act intended to send a message to the duplicitous GHW and his cronies.
The sense of failure in the country was apparent ever since (Sir) Colin and his perfumed prince types failed to roust and oust Hussein in 1991. While it may have been ill-advised for Hussein to have listened to the Americans in 1990, it was even worse for his adversaries to assume that someone like Hussein would sit idly and lick his wounds once his wars failed, mostly due to the inconsistencies and lies of his "friends" Ronnie and Poppy. Having fought the Iranis for something like eight years and having gone broke in the process, his continued domination of the Iraqis was undisputed. Waxing Patton-esque, the same problem that the United States had in not allowing the Germans' destruction of the Soviet Union again arose with not allowing Hussein to destroy the Ayatollah's Iran, leaving us today with a "cold" war with a potentially nuclear armed foe, one created by the proto-Buscists.
While Rummy and his "Charlie McCarthy" dummies all mouthed and seemingly uttered the right things about "shock 'n awe," the events as they unfolded on the ground provided enough confirmation that it is still the Army and other ground forces who must secure the vanquished. One of the worst mistakes was not providing security for the national treasures other than oil; the biggest was allowing looting of places like AlQaQa where conventional weapons were stored and later looted, only to be used against the Americans and others in the form of IEDs and other lethal devices when not employed as originally intended. This can be loosely likened to allowing the Germans to have all the gas they needed during the Battle of the Bulge.
But. I digress. I have some traditional notion of entering conflicts and waging wars for honourable and quantifiable reasons, other than seeking revenge for something that was ill-advised to begin with, a dozen or so years ago. Without the need for basing in Saudi Arabia to perpetuate the Iraqi cleansing following Desert Shield/Desert Storm (DS/DS = 1?), would the likes of bin Laden been motivated to seek revenge against the Buscists in the February 1993 NYC WTC bombing, expecting Poppy to have been reelected? Would the second wave of attacks on the same buildings have happened once Younger George was confirmed installed in the WH?
As we go into another election season, the banter is between this party and that other one, with the Buscists STILL attempting to deflect their responsibility for poor decisions in the past onto other bogeymen/-women who might seek to interfere with Younger George's tunnel vision focus on solidifying his position (at least in his calcified cranium) that his tribe is superior if not supreme. Unfortunately, the Americans have been seduced into thinking this is some national crisis, anything other than a feud between two socially and politically unenlightened groups, ones who will put the resources and ideals of their entire countries at risk to settle their personal differences and to satisfy their egomania.
As Saddam Hussein accurately assessed the situation before the Second Iraqi Debacli, echoed by Mullah Omar, the differences might have been more easily settled had the two leaders squared off with automatic weapons, mano-a-mano, one-on-one. But, as we know from the person who claims that the Democrats don't have a "plan" (code for the Democrats not helping Younger George get through this intellectually trying time by giving him all the answers like his old Yale/Harvard cronies did), it is easier for other people to do the dirty work, using others' kids to save his own, obfuscating the real reasons why the United States has to suffer at least emotionally for his immature World views and tantrums.
Four or 40 thousand, 400K or 4 million, no number was too small or too large to get the job done. Unfortunately, however messy (or "untidy) conflicts are, stupidity is not a rationale, reason, or excuse for not getting the job done right the first time. There is an old saying, something along the lines of, "There is never enough time to do the job right the first time but always enough time to do it again, the second time." This is the Buscist Axiom, the essence of SNAFU, the precipitate of FUBAR. As we've seen over the last six years (and as Mr Woodward told an interviewer about H Kissinger), we're fighting old battles all over again, using past and present losers' obsessions to dupe Americans into believing that this was ever THEIR problem. Now, it is, if only by misguided beliefs, relying on those who, as Senator Kerry tried to say, never did their homework and got a bunch of kids stuck in Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,1937296,00.html
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Syrians_reject_Saddam_death_penalty_11052006.html
Syrians reject Saddam death penalty
dpa German Press Agency
Published: Sunday November 5, 2006
Damascus- Syrians rejected Sunday the death penalty handed down to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and cast doubts over the legitimacy of the court. Legislator George Jabbour said he would have preferred that Saddam be sentenced to life imprisonment instead of hanging.
"Saddam had committed a lot of crimes, which as a whole deserve hanging," said Jabbour. But, he added, "I am against death sentences and I would prefer a life-long sentence."
He also questioned the legitimacy of the trial "which is conducted under the US occupation and an incomplete Iraqi sovereignty."
Suleiman Hadad, another legislator, said Saddam was sentenced to death by the United States and not Iraq.
"It's disgraceful that Saddam is sentenced to hang by the US. He would be hanged by the US and not by the Iraqi people," he said.
Hadad also questioned the legitimacy of the court, saying: "any trial under occupation is illegal."
"He is a criminal and deserves death for the crimes he had committed," said 38-year-old engineer Mazen Wassfouf. "But he should not be tried by the US. The trial was politicized."
"The verdict is issued by a killer against a killer ... It's a very dirty play composed and directed by the US with the cooperation of the treacherous Iraqi government, which is now much more criminal that Saddam," Zeid Mohammad, 46, a civil servant, said.
Homam Abbas, 24, a law student, said the verdict had been handed down to benefit the Republican party of George W Bush in US Congressional elections.
"He was a tyrant," said Abbas of Saddam. "But as a head of state, he should receive a more merciful verdict."
© 2006 dpa German Press Agency
Alamaine, IVe
Grand Forks, ND, US of A
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a
philosopher." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Post a Comment
<< Home