How George Bush became the new Saddam

[FourScore]

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST ACCOUNTS I'VE EVER READ OF IRAQ...IT'S LONG, BUT WORTH IT!!!


How George Bush became the new Saddam
COVER STORY: Its strategies shattered, a desperate Washington is reaching out to the late dictator's henchmen.
Patrick Graham | Sep 20, 2007 | 10:04 am EST





AN EXCERPT:

"When Gen. David Pet­raeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, appeared before Congress with Ambassador Crocker to testify about the results of President Bush’s “surge” strategy, he talked a lot about these tribal militias and the success of Anbar. It is the only progress the U.S. has made in Iraq for years. It’s unclear whether the additional 30,000 troops that make up the surge have had much effect on the Anbar Awakening. But watching Gen. Petraeus, I was struck by how familiar his words sounded. The general talked like every Sunni I’ve ever met in Iraq—hell, he sounded a bit like Saddam. The old tyrant would have had one of his characteristic chest-heaving guffaws watching Petraeus as he intoned the old Baathist mantra about the dangers to Iraq: Iran, Iran, Iran. Bush took up Gen. Petraeus’s views a few days later in a nationally televised speech about Iraq, in which he talked about the threat Tehran posed. It seems that Petraeus and Bush have come to the same conclusion as Saddam: the main enemy is Iran, and you can’t govern Iraq without the Sunni Arab tribes, even as you encourage anti-Iranian nationalism among the Shia. This is what Saddam did during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and what Washington is trying to do now. One of the main problems with this strategy is that both the Sunni tribes and Shia nationalists are profoundly anti-American and don’t trust each other—a potential recipe for further disaster.

Going back to Iraq is like sitting through a depressing Scheherazade, 10,001 Nights of Horror Stories. Everybody had them. Do you want to see a picture of someone’s 10-year-old boy, chopped up in pieces and put in a cooking pot because his parents couldn’t pay the Shia militia’s ransom? Here, look at the burns on my body, inflicted by the bodyguards of the Sunni politician who sold my eight-year-old son and me to al-Qaeda. Let me tell you about being kidnapped in Falluja by a gang that pretended to be al-Qaeda—they made me drink urine and had a fake beheading studio where they set up mock video executions to scare us into raising ransoms. As a friend of mine kept saying over and over—“Where do they get these people? What kind of a person does this? Where do they get them?”

Sadly, these stories are true..."

SNIP

"...The level of corruption in the ministries is astonishing, but according to U.S. government reports they are often “untouchable” because the prime minister’s office protects allies from investigation. The Ministry of Finance is run by Bayan Jabr, the former minister of the interior who hired thousands of Shia militiamen as police and set up death squads and torture prisons. His successor had to fire 10,000 employees, and today various factions fight for control of each floor of the Interior Ministry building.

At least US$10 billion has been embezzled, according to Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity, which is itself underfunded (12 of its members have been murdered). After a U.S. report surfaced detailing how the prime minister blocked the commission’s investigations of corrupt officials, Maliki accused the head of the commission of corruption and threatened him with arrest. Luckily the man was already out of the country. Corruption in the Oil Ministry—Iraq’s nationalized energy sector is its only real source of revenue—has resulted in shortages that have only increased the long lineups for gasoline in a country brimming with oil. Senior Iraqi army officers complain that when they organize raids on Shia militias, they are stopped on orders from the prime minister’s office. Iraq was a disaster under Saddam, but it has turned into Nigeria..."

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070920_100442_7900&source=srch&page=1

[Amonester]

1. All that, and now this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3001485

c
h
o
l
e
r
a

in the north
east
west
and south...


war criminals at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should (must) be held accountable...
:grr:

[FourScore]

2. Shameless kick It's worth reading. n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Reading this article helps you understand

why fixing Chimp's screw up in invading and occupying Iraq can be compared to trying to get toothpaste, once it has been squeezed out, back into the tube again.

[unhappycamper]

4. k&r n/t