Allawi Presses Effort to Bring Back Baathists -NYT

[Rose Siding]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 12 - Seeking to speed the return of senior officials of the former ruling Baath Party into the government, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has tried to dismantle a powerful independent commission that was established after the American invasion to keep such people from power.

It is the most aggressive move yet by Dr. Allawi, a former Baathist who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein, to bring former ranking party members into his fold. Dr. Allawi says the readmissions will dampen an increasingly lethal insurgency by co-opting disenfranchised Sunni Muslim Baathists. The expertise of high officials from the old Iraqi security forces is also urgently needed to help combat the guerrillas, he contends.

And with general elections scheduled for January, Dr. Allawi and American officials are scrambling for ways to bring reluctant Sunnis into the political process.

Dr. Allawi's push reflects, in part, his long power struggle with Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile who is chairman of the commission and favors a thorough purging of senior Baathists. But it is also part of a deeper battle for the soul of the Iraqi government and will determine who holds some of the highest offices........

http://nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/middleeast/13baath.html?hp&ex=1097640000&en=fa7eaa3b396deca7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Darranar]

1. So he wants to bring back Saddam's butchers?

More "liberation"....

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. History repeats itself

when we don't learn from it. Well, maybe they did learn something...that an Iraqi Dictator was more stable than the hell hole they created. So let's just replace one dictator with another! Problem solved.

Next?

[Pithy Cherub]

3. Meet the new boss

same as the old boss.

CIA approved
pResident approved

Chalmers Johnson is so correct in Blowback and Secret Empire about how we just keep returning to the scene of the crime with the same people!

[jdj]

5. Something tells me this ain't gonna work.

Something tells me this ain't gonna work.

[struggle4progress]

8. Bingo. eom

[Eye and Monkey]

4. BushCo's puppet is saying that he wants to bring back Saddam?

(just seeing what it feels like to twist stories out of context, like rePubliCons do. I don't like it, it feels creepy.)

[MidwestMomma]

6. I did not just read Allawi wants to bring back the Baathists....

Yep, guess I did...

That is one fucked up mess Bush got us in over there.

[Aidoneus]

7. At best, that'll take out maybe 3% of the Resistance

The way I figure that:

--Credible estimates suggest maybe 20% of the Resistance as made up of dedicated figures of the Baath, if that;
--Half of that was anti-Saddam anyway, or have otherwise moved on to the new tendencies;
--Half of the rest (and more of the other part) have melted in with either the Salafi Islamist movements, which they were probably already a part of anyway under Saddam (there was a signifigant semi-underground anti-Saddam Fallujah-based Salafi tendency in the army during the 90s), or with some of the other pan-Arab Nationalist outfits;
--Half of the rest would be principled enough to not make deals with a CIA terrorist puppet like `Alawi, or are far-gone enough down the 'wrong' path so as to not be able to turn around from their current peers and run with a crowd not even the traitor `Alawi would take in (some of these people work with al-Tawhid in Baghdad now);
--And the other half would just like a paycheck and don't give a fuck who signs it (like the Mukhabarat criminals that already work for the Occupyers).

Anybody else it would attract, and there would probably be no few looking for a paycheck in the economic environment created by the crusaders, would not be a major factor in the resistance anyway and `Alawi is just jerking himself off for the cameras. That, and the Chalabi aspect perhaps.
It is an open secret that the quisling `Alawi regime is already composed at every level of Baathists of various stripes, while some other Baathists still resist. One thing Saddam liked to do in his time was periodically weed out those he thought disloyal; it would seem like he either didn't use enough 'bug spray', was betrayed by the majority of those who served under him who were just political starfuckers and would take a check signed by the devil himself (which they now do), or was as much a traitor as they are (the "fall" of Baghdad was rather suspicious, even if the resistance is obviously well-stocked by all of the shit he left behind for those who hated both him & the crusaders). :shrug:

[sandnsea]

9. rotfl

4 more years! 4 more years!

Can you even believe how fucked up this country is? People supporting a President who started a war to "free the Iraqis" and we're now killing the Iraqi's we went to free... AND putting back the same people who were in power. PLUS not doing anything about the country that's really shooting off nuclear weapons, Pakistan. If nobody was dying, it would be on par with the best Marx Bros. comedy ever made.

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. And Why not? Allwai needs to be treated with respect. He, like the chimp

is a brave man, a man of god. Allawi is our man, a patriot, a true believer in democracy. Who cares about the bath people, they have been marginalized, we don't care about them anymore.