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December 27, 2006
It looks as if Saddam Hussein's death from execution will come shortly. Few will shed any tears for this dictator, given the way he brutalized, tortured and killed the Iraqi people.
Osama
It is apparent from the Iraq Study Group report that Iraq isn't going to have a democracy in any meaningful time frame. Nor a stable, pro-American, anti-Iranian government. So why is the US,. UK and Australia fighting in Iraq? To install a Shi'ite state align with Iran? An American answer by Emily Miller in the Washington Post. It demands some accountibility from the nation's leaders.
The Post has a photo essay entitled Life at a Ramadi Outpost It shows how the US troops are in hostile territory, where a hearts and minds strategy no longer works. The Iraqi's do not want the US there.
Juan Cole has a post on the top ten myths about Iraq. It's good stuff and required reading. Deconstructing myths around the war on terror is necessay because the core resistance to the US Iraq is not al-Qaeda---it is an insurgency by Suuni Arabs acting as spoilers. Deconstructing myths is also necessary because Iraq has become a farce. We now have British troops attacking the police at the al-Jamiat police station that they established and with whom they had been theoretically working for nearly four years. As Roy Hattersley observes in The Guardian:
among their regular activities, they [the police at the al-Jamiat police station] crushed prisoners' hands and feet, electrocuted them and burned them with cigarettes. You will recall that one of the reasons given to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the obligation to save the people from that sort of atrocity. It now appears that, at least in al-Jamiat police station, the arrival of what is bravely described as democracy has not made much difference.
President Bush assures us that he is working on a plan for victory. As Condelezza Rice says about Iraq:
This is a country that is worth the investment because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor, you'll have a very different kind of Middle East. And I know that from the point of view of not just monetary costs, but the sacrifice of American lives, a lot has been sacrificed for Iraq, a lot has been invested in Iraq.
So what is the dividend?
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I think is the British had of been a bit less greedy and truer to their word when carving the area up the Us would not be there now cleaning up the mess they made. Australia too has some obligations.