Bush is the New Saddam

Posted by BooMan | Sep 21, 2007 | 17 |

Falluja is only 50 kilometers from Baghdad, but a prudent traveler will fly to Damascus first and drive to Falluja from the west. That’s what the Bush administration calls progress in Anbar province.

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 is the new Saddam.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

17 Comments

hens teeth on September 21, 2007 at 10:48 am

And our success came from the locals deciding to do something about it when they thought we might be leaving.
Surge on.
boran2 on September 21, 2007 at 10:51 am

Bumpersticker

Bush: the new Saddam
BooMan on September 21, 2007 at 10:53 am

I’m willing to bet that not one word of this is true.
- Quentin on September 21, 2007 at 12:12 pm
  
  I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I saw that the WaPo had the gall to publish this crap. Not only is not one word of it true, every word of it is sordidly mendacious, carefully fabricated and constructed to advance the cause of war, war and more war forever and ever. Libels, deceits, distortions, what the WaPo used to call propaganda when it came from the mouthpieces of the former Soviet Union. Rumor is war’s closest ally, said an ancient Greek. Or was it the English bard?
  - chocolate ink on September 21, 2007 at 4:56 pm
    
    Absolutely, this is reads like a bunch of innuendo, rumor and gossip trying to pass itself off a serious piece of journalism..funny they didn’t quote the head of IAEA, El Baradei who would no doubt be the expert on what Syria just might or might not be doing.
- diane on September 21, 2007 at 7:40 pm
  
  had a much more believable take on it
  
  Divisions have appeared again in US President George W. Bush’s administration over a North Korean nuclear disarmament deal amid leaked US intelligence citing alleged atomic links between the Stalinist state and Syria.
  
  As North Korea moves to declare and disable its nuclear weapons program under a six-party deal, reports in the New York Times and Washington Post have suggested Pyongyang may be helping US arch rival Syria build a nuclear weapons facility.
  
  The reports, citing unnamed sources, were based on intelligence information supposedly from Israel’s flyover and apparent raid last week on targets inside Syria.
  
  The information could have been provided by hawks within the Bush administration who are against the rapidly-progressing deal with North Korea, some experts said.
  
  They questioned the timing of the reports, coming just ahead of key six-party talks among the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia, where Pyongyang is widely expected to agree to declare and disable its nuclear arsenal by the end of 2007.
  
  “There is supposed to be an effort by some officials to torpedo the North Korea nuclear deal by portraying North Korea as a ‘proliferator,'” said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons expert, who was once a key advisor to Congress.
  
  He likened the reports to those that surfaced in the run up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 during which officials provided apparently incorrect intelligence information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD)…
  
  (Link)
  - BooMan on September 21, 2007 at 8:04 pm
    
    it’s good to see you around, diane.
    - diane on September 21, 2007 at 9:40 pm
      
      it’s nice to be missed.
      
      I’m here every day, but mostly just lurking lately.
BooMan on September 21, 2007 at 11:03 am

Progress:

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, while so much that is said about Iraq is myth and delusion. As the famous American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn wrote about armed conflict, there is “the real war and the propaganda war.” During the congressional hearings about the surge, I kept thinking of Tattoo on Fantasy Island, half expecting Ambassador Crocker to tug on Gen. Petraeus’s sleeve and say, “Look, boss, da plane.” Smiles, everyone, smiles! Sometimes I think Iraq doesn’t exist at all. It’s just a series of preconceptions, a country invented to keep the West’s intelligentsia busy arguing and pontificating, fighting over facts about a place that is so clearly a work of fiction. Frankly, I wish it didn’t exist, at least for the sake of Iraqis. First Saddam, now this.
- CabinGirl on September 21, 2007 at 11:24 am
  
  from the same article:
  
  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.
  - BooMan on September 21, 2007 at 11:29 am
    
    The great irony of Maliki is that under other circumstances a government like his–one that is: a) accused by the U.S. of close relations with an American enemy (Iran); b) running a strategically important country (like Iraq); c) involved in the oppression and murder of one of its minorities (the Sunnis), which is closely linked to an important U.S. ally (the Saudis)–is an administration that many Americans would want to eliminate. There is a good chance that if the U.S. Army wasn’t there already, Washington would have invaded to get rid of Maliki. But having toppled Saddam, lost thousands of soldiers, and so far spent some US$500 billion on combat operations alone, the U.S. is now in too weak of a position to do much.
    - CabinGirl on September 21, 2007 at 11:30 am
      
      Hey, nothing that 6 more months of ‘more of the same’ can’t fix…
dada on September 21, 2007 at 11:34 am

Iraqi’s standing up, but chimpy and Blackwater won’t stand down:

US Resumes Blackwater Convoys in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — American convoys under the protection of Blackwater USA resumed on Friday, four days after the U.S. Embassy suspended all land travel by its diplomats and other civilian officials in response to the alleged killing of civilians by the security firm.

A top aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had earlier conceded it may prove difficult for the Iraqi government to follow through on threats to expel Blackwater and other Western security contractors.

The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation into Sunday’s incident was ongoing, said a way out of the Blackwater crisis could be the payment of compensation to victims’ families and an agreement from all sides on a new set of ground rules for their operations in Iraq.

[…]

© AP LINK

just send money.

STFU and sit back down al-Maliki.

lTMF’sA
- chocolate ink on September 21, 2007 at 4:58 pm
  
  So Maliki blinked and his personal bank account probably just got a lot bigger.
ignorant bystander on September 21, 2007 at 1:02 pm

I know Friedman is a dirty word these days, and I know I’ve posted this before, but dammit, it’s not like nobody saw this coming.

Let’s start with one simple fact: Iraq is a black box that has been sealed shut since Saddam came to dominate Iraqi politics in the late 1960’s. Therefore, one needs to have a great deal of humility when it comes to predicting what sorts of bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies remove the lid. Think of it this way: If and when we take the lid off Iraq, we will find an envelope inside. It will tell us what we have won and it will say one of two things.

It could say, ”Congratulations! You’ve just won the Arab Germany — a country with enormous human talent, enormous natural resources, but with an evil dictator, whom you’ve just removed. Now, just add a little water, a spoonful of democracy and stir, and this will be a normal nation very soon.”

Or the envelope could say, ”You’ve just won the Arab Yugoslavia — an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that can only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist. Congratulations, you’re the new Saddam.”

In the first scenario, Iraq is the way it is today because Saddam is the way he is. In the second scenario, Saddam is the way he is because Iraq is what it is. Those are two very different problems. And we will know which we’ve won only when we take off the lid. The conservatives and neo-cons, who have been pounding the table for war, should be a lot more humble about this question, because they don’t know either.

Thinking About Iraq (II)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 26, 2003
- dada on September 21, 2007 at 2:10 pm
  
  …Or the envelope could say, ”You’ve just won the Arab Yugoslavia — an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that can only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist. Congratulations, you’re the new Saddam.”
  
  D’oh!
  
  He’s disrespected for a reason, IMO…because, if he really was/is the ME expert he pretends to be, he knew what the answer was.
  
  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to have a pretty damn good idea of which one of Thomas “FU” Friedman’s scenarios was right. All one had to do was look at the history of Iraq/Mesopotamia…it’s not like they hadn’t been battling one another, as well as outsiders since….oh…2500BC or so. Not to mention the relatively recent history of the 1920 Revolt against the British, and the obvious comparisons prior to the invasion. This Common Dreams post from 2004, does an excellent job of relating the similarities.
  
  Friedman was doing nothing more than leaving himself an out while carrying water for the BushCo™ push to war.
  
  lTMF’sA
DaveW on September 21, 2007 at 1:40 pm

Time for the Senate Dems to freeze into their hero postures and submit a resolution to bomb Canada for allowing our fine military to be compared with Saddam.

Bush is the New Saddam

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BooMan

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