THE US, UN AND IRAQ V

Hussein to Jefferson without a Khomeini

Posted December 18 2003

Are you sitting down?

We've encountered many surprises since we invaded Iraq, but now that the political process is under way the biggest surprise may be just around the corner, and it's this: The first post-Saddam democratic government that the United States gives birth to in Iraq may be called "The Islamic Republic of Iraq" -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I told you to sit down.

The challenge of reforming any of the 22 nondemocratic Arab states comes down to a very simple question: How do you get from here to there -- how do you go from an authoritarian monarchy or a military regime to a more representative government -- without ending up with a Khomeini-like theocracy à la Iran or a civil war à la Algeria.

Virtually all of these Arab states suffer from the same problem: Because of decades of political repression, one-man rule and economic stagnation, there is no viable middle class and no legitimate, independent political parties and institutions to fill the void once the authoritarian leadership is removed. Iraq exhibits this problem in spades.

As a result, in the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq, the primary sources of legitimacy, and political expression, are tribal and religious. This dependence upon, and respect for, religious authority will be reflected in the first post-Saddam government -- whether it comes about by indirect or direct elections. Because Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq, and because the only current legitimate Shiite leaders are religious figures, their views and aspirations will have to be taken into account.

There is, however, good reason to believe that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq and the only one who can claim to speak for Iraqi Shiites as a whole, does not aspire to be a Khomeini. Many Iraqi Shiite clerics have lived in Iran and avowedly do not want to follow its authoritarian path. Moreover, because Shiites are a majority in Iraq, they are the ones with the greatest stake in keeping Iraq a unified state. Given their numbers, any democratic Iraq is one where Shiites will have great influence. But to keep Iraq unified, the Shiites will have to respect the rights and aspirations of Iraq's Kurds and Sunnis, as well as other minorities.

What is unfolding in Iraq today -- a tug of war between Ayatollah Sistani and the Governing Council over how an interim government should be elected -- is something inevitable, essential and inescapably messy.

"What we are witnessing," explains Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University professor who is the author of The Shi'is of Iraq, "is a very healthy bargaining session over what will be the relationship between religion and politics in Iraq and over the process of choosing legitimate national and communal leaders. It is very important that the Americans show respect for the views of Sistani -- whose tacit support for the U.S. presence in Iraq has been enormously important -- and let Sistani and the other Iraqi political forces thrash this out on their own."

Ayatollah Sistani is "not a Khomeini," adds Nakash, and he does not envisage an Iraq ruled directly by clerics. The ayatollah comes from the quietist school of Shiite clerics, who have traditionally attempted to shield themselves from politics. In demanding elections, he's obviously looking out for Shiite interests, but he's also insisting that the new Iraqi government be as legitimate and stable as possible.

"If there is going to be a stable government in Iraq, it has to come about after some genuine public debate and after some consensus is reached regarding the relationship between religion and state and between the clerics and the politicians," Nakash said. "Otherwise, no Iraqi government will last once the Americans leave. It will not have a legitimate base."

If things go reasonably well, the result will be an initial Iraqi government that is more religious than Turkey but more democratic than Iran. Not bad.

We must not try to abort this unfolding discussion among Iraqis. In fact, we should be proud of it. We are fostering a much-needed free political dialogue in the heart of the Arab world. Our job is to make sure there is enough security for this critical discussion, so I would bring every U.S. soldier from Europe and Japan to Iraq to make this work.

There is no more important political project for the United States in the world today than seeing if Iraq can get from Saddam to Jefferson without going through Khomeini.

Write to Thomas L. Friedman at The New York Times, 229 W. 43rd St., New York, NY 10036.

Then you are speculating that Bush and his staff are a group of masterminds that can run a campaign of stealth and deception the likes of which has been unheard of in the history of mankind?

Hell, I am a staunch supporter of the current administration and even I don't think they could pull something like that off.

Quote:

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Gel, Westerners fought for and defend freedom, without freedom you can never reach superiority. The way I see it, the ideas and values of freedom have made the west superior.

WMD hunter wants out of Iraq job
CIA trying to keep Kay, at least until next report

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3748689
NBC News and news services

WASHINGTON - The chief of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has said he wants to step down but CIA officials have asked him to reconsider, NBC News has learned. [..]

During a meeting Monday, Kay told CIA officials that he wants to leave the assignment, but they asked him to reconsider, even if only to return for a brief period to file one more interim report, [..]

Kay is said to want out because he feels he no longer has adequate resources to do the job. Under pressure from the military, the administration's took a quarter of Kay's intelligence analysts and security forces and redeployed them to the counterinsurgency effort.

Kay has been on the job for seven months. He has so far found no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons and no ongoing nuclear program. His last interim report found some evidence on missiles, including a previously unknown attempt by Iraq to buy missiles from North Korea for which Saddam Hussein spent 10 million dollars without getting the missiles.

Kay's team has concluded that Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons ... but CIA officials in Washington still believe something may be found.

I still have trouble believing Italy is possible.

Just to toss something new into the mix, this, overshadowed by the news of Saddam's capture,could prove significant in coming days ... or, of course, it could turn out to be nothing more than another "Bodyguard Story":

Quote:

Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam

Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam
A document tying the Iraqi leader with the 9/11 terrorist is probably fake.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741646
Newsweek

A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.

The new document, supposedly written by the chief of the Iraqi intelligence service, was trumpeted by the Sunday Telegraph of London earlier this week in a front-page story that broke hours before the dramatic capture of Saddam Hussein. TERRORIST BEHIND SEPTEMBER 11 STRIKE WAS TRAINED BY SADDAM, ran the headline [..]

But U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert tell NEWSWEEK that the document is most likely a forgery—part of a thriving new trade in dubious Iraqi documents that has cropped up in the wake of the collapse of Saddam's regime.

"It's a lucrative business," says Hassan Mneimneh, codirector of an Iraqi exile research group reviewing millions of captured Iraqi government documents. "There's an active document trade taking place … You have fraudulent documents that are being fabricated and sold" for hundreds of dollars a piece. [..]

[The story] described a "handwritten memo" that was supposedly sent to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, chief of Iraqi intelligence at the time. It describes a three-day "work program" that Atta had undertaken in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who lived in the Iraqi capital until his death under suspicious circumstances in August 2002. [..]

The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta's movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. [..]

FBI documents show that during the last few days in June—when the presumed Iraq trip would appear to have occurred—almost all of Atta's movements are accounted for: On June 27, 2001, Atta flew from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Boston. On the morning of June 28, he traveled from Boston to San Francisco (flying first class) where he switched planes and landed in Las Vegas that afternoon at 2:41 p.m. That afternoon, he rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo rental-car office, set up an account at an Internet café called the Cyber Zone and checked into the EconoLodge motel on Las Vegas Boulevard, a cheap motel in a neighborhood of seedy strip joints that is located barely two blocks from the local FBI office.

The FBI records show Atta logged onto his Cyber Zone Internet account five times over the next two days and then checked out of the EconoLodge at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1. He then returned his rental car and boarded a flight to Denver at 5:59 a.m., landing in Boston later that day. A week later, on July 7, Atta boarded a flight from Boston to Zurich [..]

While all of Atta's movements cannot be accounted for, enough is known to make it "highly unlikely" that the September 11 ringleader could have flown off to Baghdad for a three-day work program with Iraqi intelligence, a FBI official told NEWSWEEK. For similar reasons, the bureau has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001. [..]

Mneimneh, the Iraqi document expert, says that there are other reasons to discount the handwritten memo touted by the Telegraph. The document includes another sensational second item: how Iraqi intelligence, helped by a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization," arranged for a shipment from Niger to reach Iraq by way of Libya and Syria. Although the shipment is unspecified, the reference to Niger was immediately suggestive of Bush administration assertions earlier this year that Iraq sought to import yellowcake uranium from that African nation—claims that also have been widely discredited as being based on other forged documents that apparently came from the Niger Embassy in Rome.

Mneimneh says the wording of the document makes him highly suspicious: Iraqi intelligence officials were notoriously conservative and rarely—if ever—put incriminating information in writing. The reference to the Iraqi intelligence working with a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization" is "too explicit," he says.

Ironically, even the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, which has been vocal in claiming ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, was dismissive of the new Telegraph story. "The memo is clearly nonsense," an INC spokesman told NEWSWEEK.

Contacted by Newsweek, The Sunday Telegraph's Con Coughlin acknowledged that he could not prove the authenticity of the document. He said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a "senior" member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was "genuine," he and his newspaper had "no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens," he said. [..]

Brand X wrote:

Quote:

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Gel, Westerners fought for and defend freedom, without freedom you can never reach superiority. The way I see it, the ideas and values of freedom have made the west superior.

Heh - I think that would be the point: that's how we see it - but it's not how many of them see it ;-)

Just to toss something new into the mix, this, overshadowed by the news of Saddam's capture,could prove significant in coming days ... or, of course, it could turn out to be nothing more than another "Bodyguard Story":

Quote:

Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam

By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 14/12/2003)

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

I'll be watching with interest to see if anything develops further of this, though I've become quite accustomed to seeing stories of this nature evaporate rather than explode.

Thursday, December 18, 2003 ::

One day .. TWO MASKS ..

THE FIRST MASK:
The Iraqi translator, coming to a secondary school at AlAmryya to help "them" arrest students. Students don't have the right to go on demonstrations.
Americans came with pictures of pupils, list of their names, and arrested them FROM THEIR CLASSES. The headmaster couldn't speak a word.

THE SECOND MASK:
The Iraqi Fedayi (one of the fedyeen) running after journalists in one of the demonstrations happened at Adamyya in Baghdad, preventing anyone from taking pictures of people marching there ...
He shot one of my friends .. Wasif .. in his foot.

Too many things happening the last couple of days, it looks that the capture of Saddam started something.
:: raed 10:14 PM [+] ::

Tanks Roll into Tikrit
By Robin Pomeroy
Reuters

Tuesday 16 December 2003

"Any demonstration against the government or coalition forces will be fired upon"
-- U.S.-backed Regional Governor Hussein al-Jaburi
(Reuters) - Tanks have rolled out on to the streets of Tikrit, as a message that the U.S. army will not tolerate shows of support for Saddam Hussein in the captured president's home town.

U.S. troops forcibly broke up at least four attempted pro-Saddam demonstrations and three soldiers were wounded when a bomb went off as their Humvee patrolled the streets.

In response, around 30 American tanks and Bradley armoured vehicles rolled up Tikrit's busy main street as two helicopter gunships buzzed overhead.

Armed troops jumped down from tanks and some used strong language to clear shoppers from crowded pavements in a town smarting from lost privilege after the fall of Saddam.

Tikrit is home to many of Saddam's kinsmen who enjoyed wealth and status under his three decade rule. U.S. troops found the former president hiding in a pit just a few km (miles) from town. A U.S. commander conceded that the occupying forces would never be popular.

"These people love Saddam, that isn't true of other cities," said Lieutenant Colonel Steven Russell. "These people have always hated us in this area. It is not surprising that they hate us."

Some locals backed into shop doorways, many just stood and watched the parade by an occupying army whose temporary base is a sprawling complex of palaces Saddam built for himself and his family on the side of the Tigris river on the edge of town.

An hour later, a handful of military vehicles returned, one carrying the U.S.-backed regional governor Hussein al-Jaburi, while a recording of his voice boomed a warning to would-be Saddam loyalists.

"Any demonstration against the government or coalition forces will be fired upon," Jaburi's voice said, according to an army interpreter. "This is a fair warning."

Demonstrators risk a year in jail and, if they work for the state as civil servants or teachers, they will loose their jobs, the message said. All demonstrations are illegal in the U.S.-occupied province.

"They are not allowed to go around kissing pictures of Saddam in this city," Russell said. "It will not happen."

Afterwards, Jaburi and Russell interviewed a middle-aged man in traditional Arab clothing who they suspect of inciting demonstrations.

"Look me in the eye. Let me make something very clear," the American officer told the man over tea at the governor's office.

"If our ears and eyes see and hear you are connected with demonstrations, and anti-coalition activities you will be going to jail for a very long time."

Russell described the roll-out of tanks not as a show of force, but as a security operation and said a tough approach was needed. "We cannot hand out lollipops, it does not work," he said.