Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Some hope in Iraq , Indian stories
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
One cannot help feeling intermittently sorry for the President, as he speaks those same words of hope and victory when everything crashes. Yes, he and his arrogant advisers dragged us into a deadly war, they mismanaged an easy conquest by not making common cause with the Iraqi Army and the Baathists, they mangled our relations with the Islamic East, and turned away a hater of the Taliban, Iraq, by destroying a possible reconciliation for the sake of a facile PR phrase, the Axis of Evil. Earlier, by being cheapskate with our power, they threw away a victory over al-Qaeda at Tora Bora, All this because an insecure party, marginally elected , wanted to pull the country together behind it in a patriotic war against terror, The results have been abysmal and the Republicans are paying for it in reputation and in elections to come. But no matter how bad the war, the idea of a total early pulling out of our troops fills one’s heart with forebodings. Even though the mad-dog wing of the GOP is the culprit, the American people will be charged with the damages that will ensue. Left to themselves, the Iraqi parties will enter a civil war that might engage Iran and Syria on one side and the Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians and some more members of the Arab League on the other. There are already 2 to 3 million Sunni refuges in Syria, Jordan and Egypt . Beyond that, after the Americans leave, a retaliation effort against collaborators will threaten the lives of some 2 milion people – police, army, their wives and children – people of good faith, not Quislings, deemed traitors by the Islamist extremists. Don’t expect any South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the Islamist world. The best these people can hope for is a refuge in the US, and the Washington executive branch has made no provisions, beyond accepting less than a thousand threatened people. Cheapskate in resource commitment and in mercy, bighearted in tax relief for the unneeding, that’s our Washington leadership. With nothing but misery in sight one grasps at straws, in this case a hopeful diatribe by Amir Yaheri in the Post, ex-editor in chief of a big Teheran daily and an Iranian refugee who escaped the 1979 Revolution. Author of books and lecturers on the Benador neocon lecture circuit, sometimes accused of passing conjectures as facts, he sees some hope. His thesis is that al-Qaeda had accurately analyzed the inability of the Western democracies to take united action against terror, and has exploited it. France’s Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder were the main divisors. Now, with Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel reaching an understanding of the disunity as a prolonging factor in the Iraqi conflict, the EU may get together and be persuasive enough to get the Baathist and al-Qaeda terrorists lose their incentive. To that point, the respected French new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, a founder of the Medecins sans Frontiers, has been meeting with the Iraqi Shia and Kurd leaders, with expectations of gaining acceptance of the Iraqi government in the EU, a resumption of NATO’s training of the Iraqi army, and the opening of an EU Embassy in Baghdad.
Surprisingly, the Saudis also have decided to reopen their Baghdad embassy, giving acceptance to the Shia government, with Jordan and Egypt to follow suit. The potential of expanded civil wars following an American withdrawal may be forcing some clashing powers to act rationally. There is also a report from an American commanding officer that more tribal Iraqis have started active resistance against the foreign terrorists, with an incident of the latter counterstriking en masse, killing villagers, and executing their Mullah. The Saudis have also received threats against their embassy, if and when it reopens. This is the al-Qaeda vs. the Saudi ruling family clash, but it may be more wide-spread.
As to the current disastrously ineffective Shia leadership in Iraq, Kouchner has hinted that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should resign, apologizing later, but the point has been made. The Iraqi coalition government needs restoring. Changing gears, in the Spitzer-Bruno controversy, there were some strange facts revealed in the firing of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee’s consultant Roger Stone by Majority Leader Bruno, for making a dirty call to Spitzer’s aged father. The call was strange, an act that a drunken person might commit, and the denial was the most abject revelation of pyramiding lies. What fascinated me was the $20,000 a month fee that the Campaign Committee was paying Stone. In the business environment we are used to huge charges by technology consultants, but what in the world could a campaign consultant provide of that value? Technological spy works? Dirty tricks? Listening devices? Straight research into opponents’ pasts does not pay huge remunerations.. Looking deeper, published sources show that Stone was the leader of the group that shut down the Miami-Dade 2000 vote recount effort, and was rewarded with a role in the Bush transition team, staffing the Bureau of Indian Affairs . Subsequently he earned multi-million dollar fees from Indian casino sources. Expect more revelations.
One cannot help feeling intermittently sorry for the President, as he speaks those same words of hope and victory when everything crashes. Yes, he and his arrogant advisers dragged us into a deadly war, they mismanaged an easy conquest by not making common cause with the Iraqi Army and the Baathists, they mangled our relations with the Islamic East, and turned away a hater of the Taliban, Iraq, by destroying a possible reconciliation for the sake of a facile PR phrase, the Axis of Evil. Earlier, by being cheapskate with our power, they threw away a victory over al-Qaeda at Tora Bora, All this because an insecure party, marginally elected , wanted to pull the country together behind it in a patriotic war against terror, The results have been abysmal and the Republicans are paying for it in reputation and in elections to come. But no matter how bad the war, the idea of a total early pulling out of our troops fills one’s heart with forebodings. Even though the mad-dog wing of the GOP is the culprit, the American people will be charged with the damages that will ensue. Left to themselves, the Iraqi parties will enter a civil war that might engage Iran and Syria on one side and the Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians and some more members of the Arab League on the other. There are already 2 to 3 million Sunni refuges in Syria, Jordan and Egypt . Beyond that, after the Americans leave, a retaliation effort against collaborators will threaten the lives of some 2 milion people – police, army, their wives and children – people of good faith, not Quislings, deemed traitors by the Islamist extremists. Don’t expect any South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the Islamist world. The best these people can hope for is a refuge in the US, and the Washington executive branch has made no provisions, beyond accepting less than a thousand threatened people. Cheapskate in resource commitment and in mercy, bighearted in tax relief for the unneeding, that’s our Washington leadership. With nothing but misery in sight one grasps at straws, in this case a hopeful diatribe by Amir Yaheri in the Post, ex-editor in chief of a big Teheran daily and an Iranian refugee who escaped the 1979 Revolution. Author of books and lecturers on the Benador neocon lecture circuit, sometimes accused of passing conjectures as facts, he sees some hope. His thesis is that al-Qaeda had accurately analyzed the inability of the Western democracies to take united action against terror, and has exploited it. France’s Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder were the main divisors. Now, with Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel reaching an understanding of the disunity as a prolonging factor in the Iraqi conflict, the EU may get together and be persuasive enough to get the Baathist and al-Qaeda terrorists lose their incentive. To that point, the respected French new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, a founder of the Medecins sans Frontiers, has been meeting with the Iraqi Shia and Kurd leaders, with expectations of gaining acceptance of the Iraqi government in the EU, a resumption of NATO’s training of the Iraqi army, and the opening of an EU Embassy in Baghdad.
Surprisingly, the Saudis also have decided to reopen their Baghdad embassy, giving acceptance to the Shia government, with Jordan and Egypt to follow suit. The potential of expanded civil wars following an American withdrawal may be forcing some clashing powers to act rationally. There is also a report from an American commanding officer that more tribal Iraqis have started active resistance against the foreign terrorists, with an incident of the latter counterstriking en masse, killing villagers, and executing their Mullah. The Saudis have also received threats against their embassy, if and when it reopens. This is the al-Qaeda vs. the Saudi ruling family clash, but it may be more wide-spread.
As to the current disastrously ineffective Shia leadership in Iraq, Kouchner has hinted that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should resign, apologizing later, but the point has been made. The Iraqi coalition government needs restoring. Changing gears, in the Spitzer-Bruno controversy, there were some strange facts revealed in the firing of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee’s consultant Roger Stone by Majority Leader Bruno, for making a dirty call to Spitzer’s aged father. The call was strange, an act that a drunken person might commit, and the denial was the most abject revelation of pyramiding lies. What fascinated me was the $20,000 a month fee that the Campaign Committee was paying Stone. In the business environment we are used to huge charges by technology consultants, but what in the world could a campaign consultant provide of that value? Technological spy works? Dirty tricks? Listening devices? Straight research into opponents’ pasts does not pay huge remunerations.. Looking deeper, published sources show that Stone was the leader of the group that shut down the Miami-Dade 2000 vote recount effort, and was rewarded with a role in the Bush transition team, staffing the Bureau of Indian Affairs . Subsequently he earned multi-million dollar fees from Indian casino sources. Expect more revelations.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:21 AM 
