Riverbend is Back
Riverbend weighs in on the condition of Iraq and Saddam’s impending execution.
I disagree with her about Jalal Talabani (the old-time Kurdish politician who is now Iraq’s president), who has opposed the death penalty all his political life, and I think that he genuinely won’t sign the death decree for reasons of principle.
I also don’t agree that the Bush administration was deliberately trying to break up Iraq. It wants it whole (international corporations like to sign their contracts just once, thank you). It is just that its plan, of putting the Shiites and Kurds in power and making the Sunni Arabs subordinate to them, was never practical and did have the effect of pushing the country toward a break-up.
As always, her comments are canny and give a good sense of what educated, secular Sunni Arabs in Iraq are thinking. It isn’t a position you’d hear in an interview in US corporate media.