U.S. re-hires Saddam's murderers

Further evidence that not only does the U.S. have no clue what to do in Iraq, but they have SERIOUS short term memory loss problems.

How can this be a good thing in any way? I thought this was about giving Iraqi people back their freedom.

www.sptimesrussia.com...

"Die Laughing

Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."

Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam Hussein's murderous security forces on America's payroll.

Yes, the sahibs in U.S. President George W. Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out U.S. tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo - perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad - and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.

Naturally, the Iraqi people - even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potyomkin "Governing Council" - aren't exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam's goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they're certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam's most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis - men, women and children as young as 11 - seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times of London reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their "disappeared" loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: "No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave."



jakomo

There is an old saying that says "who better to catch a thief than with a thief..."

*shrugs shoulders*

regards
seekerof

Nice try, but WOW is that lame.

Please don't answer with tired cliches and no actual discourse.

Seekerof: Describe to me how it could work. Pretend you are an Iraqi who lived under a repressive regime, policed by the SAME people who the US is hiring now. Tell me honestly how you think you would feel.



jakomo

How is the terrible carnage in Iraq not 100% of the U.S.'s responsibility? When you hire someone who you KNOW is a murderer, aren't you at least partially implicated when they commit a crime?

www.counterpunch.org...

"Of course, Iraqis protest at much of this. They protest in the streets, especially against the aggressive American military raids, and they protest in the press. Much good does it do them. When ex-Iraqi soldiers demonstrated outside Bremer's office at the former Presidential Palace, US troops shot two of them dead. When Falujah residents staged a protest as long ago as April, the American military shot 16 dead. Another 11 were later gunned down in Mosul. During two demonstrations against the presence of US troops near the shrine of Imam Hussein at Karbala last weekend, US soldiers shot dead another three. "What a wonderful thing it is to speak your own minds," Lt-Gen Sanchez said of the demonstrations in Iraq last week. Maybe he was exhibiting a black sense of humour.

All this might be incomprehensible if one forgot that the whole illegal Iraqi invasion had been hatched up by a bunch of right-wing and pro-Israeli ideologues in Washington, and that Bremer- though not a member of their group--fits squarely into the same bracket. Hence Paul Wolfowitz, one of the prime instigators of this war-he was among the loudest to beat the drum over the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist-is now trying to deflect attention from his disastrous advice to the US administration by attacking the media, in particular that pesky, uncontrollable channel, Al-Jazeera. Its reports, he now meretriciously claims, amount to "incitement to violence"-knowing full well, of course, that Bremer has officially made "incitement to violence" an excuse to close down any newspaper or TV station he doesn't like....

Indeed, anarchic violence is now being embedded in Iraqi society in a way it never was under the genocidal Saddam. Scarcely a day goes by when I do not encounter the evidence of this in my daily reporting work in Baghdad. Visiting the Yarrnouk hospital in Baghdad on Monday to seek the identity of civilians killed by American troops in Mansur the previous day, I came across four bodies Iying out in the yard beside the building in the 50C heat.

All had been shot. No one knew their identities. They were all young, save one who might have been a middle-aged man, with a hole in his sock. Three days earlier, on a visit to a local supermarket, I noticed that the woman cashier was wearing black. Yes, she said, because her brother had been murdered a week earlier. No one knew why.

In a conversation with my driver's father--who runs a photocopying shop near Bremer's palace headquarters--a young man suddenly launched into praise for Saddam Hussein. When I asked him why, he said that his father's new car had just been stolen by armed men. Trying to contact an ex-prisoner illegally held by the Americans at his home in a slum suburb of Baghdad, I drove to the mukhtar's house to find the correct address. The mukhtar is the local mayor. But I was greeted by a group of long-faced relatives who told me that I could not speak to the mukhtar--because he had been assassinated the previous night.

So, if this is my experience in just the past four days, how many murders and thefts are occurring across Baghdad--or, indeed, across Iraq? Only two days ago, for example, five men accused of selling alcohol were reportedly murdered in Basra. Again, there was no publicity, no official statement, no death toll from the CPA. Only a few days ago, I sat in the conference hall that the occupation authorities use for their daily press briefings, follies that are used to condemn "irresponsible reporting", but which record only a fraction of the violence of the previous 24 hours- violence which, of course, is well known to the authorities."

jakomo

Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals

Just too bad it's so true. Then again, when you consider that the most wanted man (Osama), was formerly trained by the CIA, it kind of puts things in perspective a bit. No doubt about it, the Bush administration has #ed up big time in post-war Iraq. The even sadder part of all of this, is that there won't be another administration in place to clean it up, as we're going to get stuck with Shrub for another 4 years, unless some kind of act of God occurs (and I don't believe in God), so....

Just to add a cliche of my own:

It's like having the foxes guard the henhouse....

As for criticizing Al-Jazeera, this is actually accurately placed blame, as it can hardly be called "objective". Hell, using phrases like zionist imperialistic, etc. isn't journalism, it is incitement.

As for US soldiers shooting protesters...it isn't like these protesters are similar to those in the West. In the West, we are usually wise enough not to throw things at people weilding machine guns...especially when those things are knives, and shot bullets....