Age: 69Former Job Experience: Dictator of Iraq from 1979 to 2003.
Skills: Leader of the Ba'ath Party since 1969
Was able to hold the fractured minorities that make up the population of Iraq in check during my tenure in office. I know how to inspire fear!
This is the first page of a resume that might be sitting on the desk of Condoleeza Rice at this very moment. Last week, we heard that the Baker Commission was formed by the administration to look at new "creative" ways to deal with the debacle in Iraq. One of their creative ideas was to carve the country into three distinct autonomous districts: Shiite, Kurd and Sunni. The Sunnis would get the part nobody else wanted. The Kurds have already effectively done this and are independantly negotiating oil contracts.
Then we heard that the Iraqi governing body has introduced legislation to do this very thing. They have started to discuss the creation of separate districts, self governing. Again, the Kurds are far ahead of everyone and are already causing waves in Turkey and Iran with the Kurdish populations there who want to secede their territories to make a nice big new Independant Kurdish State!
Now this morning I read that there is talk of a Military Junta...just floating the idea, you know, get rid of this totally redundant ineffectual democratic much praised purple fingers in the air proudly elected Iraqi government, you know, that freedom thing that Bush keeps going on about....and replacing it with a Dictatorial Council with a strong hand to keep this unruly collection of ethnics in line! A coup that takes military command of the Iraqi government couldn't take place with out the consent and the aid of the American military. Heck, we're experienced in this sort of thing. Done it plenty of times!
Now if we could only find a strong leader with experience that knows how to deal with these Iraqi rascals.................
I saw a promising resume on the desk this morning....now where did I put it?
2 comments:
This posting warrants a little history lesson. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter had severed diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and put it on a list of “terrorist nations.” This prohibited the sale to Iraq many U.S. made goods that could strengthen the Iraq militarily. Remarkably, in late 1983, none other that Donald Rumsfeld journeyed to Baghdad to pay court to Saddam Hussein on behalf of President Reagan. The purpose was to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iraq. This happened after it had become widely known that Saddam had used poison gas on Iranian troops. Soon Iraq enjoyed a brisk business with American firms. Some which supplied him with high-tech equipment and other materials of potential dual civilian and military use.
The Washington Times (Oct. 1, 2002) reported, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control even supplied Iraq with strain of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons. Included were anthrax, the bacteria that make s botulinum toxin and the germs that caused gas gangrene. Even after Saddam had used poison gas on his own people in the late 1980’s, the U.S. kindly guaranteed a $4 billion “agricultural” loan extended to Iraq by Italy’s Banco de Lavoro.
Now this brings us to the first Gulf War when the President, George H. W. Bush, encourage the Shia to rise up against Saddam but quickly backed off and dropped support to the uprisings. In 1991 on the ABC program, “This Week” the then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney stated that the administration’s reason for not going into Iraq at that time was, “They preferred the stability in Iraq under Saddam to what was predicted as a Civil War with the U.S. troops caught in a quagmire between the two religious fractions.”
Yes there was a time when Saddam was OUR brutal dictator with large oil reserves. Things were fine with the Status Quo until the event of 9/11. The oil cartel in the White House saw a chance to grab control of all Iraq’s oil reserves under the pretext of crushing the global terrorist threat. Now Dick Cheney is going around the television talk show circuit stating that no one could have ever predicted Iraq would have degraded into a Civil War when our troops went to liberate the Iraqi people and bring them freedom. All of those heart attacks must have given him memory loss from his own statements in 1991. You could also conclude that this means that no one else in the administration was doing their homework resulting in the poor job performance of this administration; or was it just blinding oil ambitions?
wjohnson...a really great synopsis of the evolution of our present situation in Iraq!
Only today I read of the strong arm terms that the US has allowed the Oil Companies to dictate to Iraq that will force them to make sweet heart deals by a January deadline.
There was a great analysis of this on todays Alternet.com.
Iraq seems to be sitting on the largest known motherlode of the easiest to extract highest grade oil on the planet. The cost of extraction is in the range of 1 to 2 dollars a barrel compared to 16 to 18 dollars for North Sea oil!
It's no mystery why the first office raided after the Iraqi invasion was the geological survey department of the Iraqi Oil Ministry!
Post a Comment