Top Ten Things You Wouldn’t expect to Happen if You Listened to Bush and Cheney
10. You wouldn’t expect Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Prison to have been put in “stress positions,” or physically poked and shoved, or subjected to “The Invasion of Space by the Female,” or to have had their heartbeat driven down to 35 beats a minute by the constant harassment, or to have them ask for crayons to write a will because they had decided to commit suicide. Some of the log of an interrogator has been published by Time magazine.
9. You would not expect that Iraq,
instead of being a beacon of democracy to neighbors like Iran, seems instead to have been a beacon of car bombings. Nine persons were killed in bombings around Iran on Sunday. Some of the bombings occurred in the oil-rich Khuzistan region, which is half Arab. The crazed Ledeenites and others who desperately want war against Iran or turbulence inside Iran are not actually going to like it if Ahvaz becomes so unstable that petroleum can’t be pumped (as has already happened in Iraq.) Take more petroleum off the world market, and the price will jump from an already high $52 a barrel.
8. You wouldn’t expect the pro-Syrian Hizbullah (Hezbollah) and its allies in Lebanon to get 10 seats in the Bikaa Valley, bringing the total number of seats held by Hizbullah and its allies to 33 out of 128.
7. You wouldn’t expect the anti-Syrian “Lebanese Forces” faction of Christians to be crushed by returned Gen. Michel Aoun, whose list won 15 of 16 seats in the largely Christian district northeast of Beirut.
6. You wouldn’t expect the resurgent Taliban to have used a roadside bomb to wound 4 US troops in Qandahar, Afghanistan. After all, resources were pulled out of Afhganistan beginnning in late winter of 2002, on the grounds that it was all taken care of.
5. You wouldn’t expect 7 Marines to have been killed in Iraq since Friday. More than 1700 US military personnel have died in Iraq since the war began.
4. You wouldn’t expect 28 bodies of Sunni Arabs to be found in Baghdad, their bodies riddled with bullets.
3. You wouldn’t expect Republican members of Congress to demand a timetable for the withrdrawal of US troops from Iraq!
2. You wouldn’t expect nearly 6 in ten of Americans to say they want at least some troops withdrawn from Iraq.
1. You wouldn’t expect Sunni Arabs of Iraq to say that now is the worst they have ever had it.
—–
Will blog more Monday afternoon.