We Meant Surge, Not Purge

by krshorewood

Standing in stark contrast to the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, a little known aspect of life under this dictator was the treatment afforded Iraqi Christians. Not that life was rosy, but according to The Guardian,

Although they (Iraqi Christians) made up only about 3% of the population of prewar Iraq - 700,000 people - under Saddam they were a prosperous minority, symbolized by the high profile of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's Christian foreign minister. Highly educated and overwhelmingly middle class, the Christians were heavily concentrated in Mosul, Basra and especially Baghdad, which before the war had the largest Christian population of any Middle Eastern town or city.

In the George Bush world of untended consequences known as the Iraq occupation, things have taken a bad turn for the Christians who live there -- or in many cases used to live there. According to today's Boston Globe, Iraqi Christians are being expelled from their homes, something that is happening to many Iraqis as religious sects are making their neighborhoods homogenous.

The article goes on to talk about how more troops are being brought in to quell the harassment, but we are too familiar with the on-going game of Whack-a-Mole being played throughout Iraq.

As many fundamentalist Christians in this country cheered on the invasion of Iraq, Bush has done the impossible. Thanks to this president, someone who has had no qualms about advertising his piety, Christians throughout Iraq are dealing with what looks to be a worse situation than under the displaced tyrant prompting half of them to flee to other countries. The exception is here to this country where the Bush administration has put severe limitations on Iraqi refugees coming to the US.

Bush has fixed it so that in Iraq, Christians don't have a prayer.

Sykes Watch: The Death of Saddam

by Bert

Wasn’t Charlie Sykes sort of inconsistent once again on Tuesday morning’s WTMJ radio show? On the one hand, Charlie thought the Iraqi “government” made itself look bad by the tawdry way it executed Saddam Hussein Saturday. This is the quote from Charlie that I latched on to: “It’s not enough to say he [Saddam Hussein] had it coming.” In other words, even though Hussein deserved to die, there were better ways to get the same result.

I agree with Charlie on both the particular point that the way Saddam was executed makes the Iraqi “government” look bush league, and I agree on his more general point, which is that ends do not justify the means.

Now, let’s rewind the tape a bit. Just prior to complaining about the lynching-like execution of Saddam, Sykes said he agreed completely with a Wall Street Journal editorial that ran Tuesday. The editorial argued that the death of Saddam Hussein made the war in Iraq worthwhile:

“The 3,000 Americans who have given their lives . . . have done so in a just
cause that rids the world of a man who might have killed hundreds of thousands
more.”

Never mind the many more U.S. soldiers who will keep dying in Iraq now that we are rid of Saddam. Never mind other damage wreaked by this war: the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, the half trillion dollars spent, the worsening of terror threats against the U.S., the installation of an Iraqi government that also tortures and kills its citizens. At least in the case of the 3,000 soldiers already lost to their families, communities, and country, their deaths are a good value in exchange for Hussein’s death, according to the editorial, and therefore to Charlie.

The obvious reply is: There are probably better ways than this war to accomplish the neutralizing of Saddam Hussein. It’s not enough to say Saddam Hussein had it coming.

You Won't Have Saddam Hussein to Pick Lice Out of Anymore

His demise is not surprising. But see if you can guess what caught my attention in this blurb:

Some Arab media, including Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and the U.S.-financed Al-Hurrah, reported about an hour before daylight Saturday (about 10 p.m. EST Friday) that Saddam had been executed.

Yes, boys and girls, our US-sponsored TV news channell is called Al-Hurrah. Hope may not be a plan, but it is, apparently, just fine for news.