Commentary on events of April 2004:
1. The creeping re-Baathification of Iraq's government continues. We are now re-hiring Saddam's upper-level officer cadre, to work for us. I predicted this in May 2003: Message 18934478
2. Months ago, there were reports the U.S. was hiring Saddam's secret police (notorious torturers), to work for Operation Iraqi Freedom. We have also taken over all of Saddam's prisons, and re-filled them. Prisoners are not given the rights of either criminals or POWs. I predicted this would result in the torture and killing of prisoners. Evidence is now making its way into the mainstream press, that my predictions (for which I was called an America-hater, terrorist sympathizer, conspiracy theorist, etc.) was correct:
CBS says the pictures it obtained show a wide range of abuses, including:
Prisoners with wires attached to their genitals
A dog attacking a prisoner
Prisoners being forced to simulate having sex with each other
A detainee with an abusive word written on his body.
The prison where the abuses are alleged to have taken place was a notorious torture centre during the Saddam Hussein era. news.bbc.co.uk
3. Iraqification is a total failure. The police and army we created (too few and poorly armed to begin with), are completely unwilling to kill their fellow Iraqis at our command. This reminds me, of how the KGB units refused to carry out the Communist's orders to fire on the pro-democracy demonstrators in the streets of Moscow in 1991.
4. Polls in the U.S. are showing, over the last several months, a serious erosion of support for the occupation of Iraq. This is happening, in spite of the fact that an amazing number of Americans continue to believe the Big Lies (Iraq WMD and Al Queda ties).
Asked whether the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, 47 percent of respondents said it had, down from 58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December, just after American forces captured Saddam Hussein. commondreams.org
5. Senator Kerry represents the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, and the Democratic wing of the War Party. He wants to increase troop levels in the Occupied Territories (Afghanistan and Iraq), and fight till victory. His call for foreign troops to replace ours, is wishful thinking. Bush has already gone, hat in hand, begging everyone for troops, and got no takers.
6. Our enemies have now carved out 3 Safe Havens, where we cannot touch them, and where our attempts at a military solution have recently failed: Waziristan (Afghan-Pakistani frontier), Fallujah (Sunni Iraq), and Najaf (Shiite Iraq). These defeats are a direct result of our failure to wage an effective HeartsAndMinds campaign among the civilians on the battlefields. I've been predicting this, too, for over a year now. I predict more such defeats, everywhere we conduct ourselves in a way that results in being hated by the civilian populations.
7. God help us, if another front opens, because we have no reserves of trained combat forces left, to meet any contingency.
8. Past war crimes committed by the U.S. and allies in our Terror War continue to go unpunished. There is a near-total lack of interest in investigating these crimes, by U.S. media. Examples:
A: Death By Container of several thousand Taliban prisoners at Mazar-e-sharif in late 2001, by Dostum's militia and U.S. Special Forces:
Message 19939017
B: the beating to death "with blunt instruments" of prisoners in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan
Message 18855061
C: the death in U.S. custody of prisoners in Iraq, including Abbas
D: our continued acceptance of Israel's policy of assassination, including the recent killing of a blind cleric in a wheelchair as he left a mosque. |
