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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigBull who wrote (49364)	10/4/2002 12:50:21 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

>>Clarke: Iraq already hiding weapons WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Iraq is secreting its reserves of chemical and biological weapons in anticipation of a U.N. arms inspection, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Friday. Clarke, who declined to elaborate on Iraq's activities, said experts would reveal more on the issue at a Pentagon briefing next week. With U.N. arms inspections likely to begin within weeks, the Pentagon is preparing to detail Iraq's efforts to dupe the world, Clarke said.<< upi.com If true, this is a good reason to go in now, IMO.

To: BigBull who wrote (49364)	10/5/2002 3:04:22 AM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

This is interesting: Iraq's Forgotten Majority By FRANK SMYTH October 3, 2002 The New York Times It is Shiites who have most consistently fought Saddam Hussein since 1991, when Shiite clerics called for an uprising. "The Shia uprising in the south was far more dangerous than the Kurdish insurgency in the north," one eyewitness later reported to the State Department. Although the small and disastrous northern uprising in 1996 had no exact counterpart in the south, a Shiite group attacked Mr. Hussein's eldest son, Uday, that year and crippled him. In 1998 Shiite rebels attacked Mr. Hussein's second in command, Izzat Ibrahim. American officials have long been reluctant to work with Iraqi Shiites out of fear that they might be too close to Iran, where the Shiite faith predominates. But Iraqi and Iranian Shiites are not as close as it might seem. The Iraqis are Arabs and the Iranians are Persian. They also, with some exceptions, follow very distinct and sometimes hostile forms of Shiism: Akhbari in Iraq, Usuli in Iran. Akhbari Shiism has never promoted political rule, while the Usuli school produced the politically active caste of priests that is a distinctive feature of Iranian Shiism. Iraqi Shiites demonstrated their independence from Iranian Shiites in 1980 after Iraq invaded Iran. A Central Intelligence Agency report noted in 1991 that Iraq's Shiites "rejected Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of velayat-e faqui (political rule by a supreme religious leader) and remained loyal to Baghdad during the eight-year war with Iran." Despite a lack of political connection, Iraq's most important Shiite clerics survive in exile in Iran today. Only in August did Bush administration officials meet with the brother of Shiite leader Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of the influential Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is based in Tehran. This is only a small step toward forming a representative anti-Hussein coalition. [More at URL] puk.org