20051213
Making the World Safe for Theocracy http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=8252
The much-ballyhooed elections in Iraq later this week are likely to dig the Iraqi hole a little deeper for the Bush administration. The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shi’ite Muslim cleric in Iraq, has indirectly ordered fellow Shi’a to cast their ballots for representatives of the Shi’ite religious parties that now control the interim Iraqi government. A permanent Shi’ite-Kurdish government may prove even more intransigent than the interim government in addressing Sunni concerns about being cut out of Iraq’s oil revenues—thus accelerating the incipient civil war in that nation.
Blurring Terrorism and Insurgency in Iraq
http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=8251
With public support for the Iraq war at low ebb, the White House is more eager than ever to conflate Iraq's insurgency with terrorism. But last week, just after President Bush gave yet another speech repeatedly depicting the U.S. war effort in Iraq as a battle against terrorists, Rep. John Murtha debunked the claim. His refutation deserved much more news coverage than it got.
"You heard the president talk today about terrorism," Murtha told reporters at a Dec. 7 news conference. "Every other word was 'terrorism.'" Speaking as a lawmaker in close touch with the Pentagon's top military leaders, he went on to confront the core of the administration's current argument for keeping American soldiers in Iraq.
"Let's talk about terrorism versus insurgency in Iraq itself," Murtha said. "We think that foreign fighters are about 7 percent – might be a little bit more, a little bit less. Very small proportion of the people that are involved in the insurgency are terrorists or how I would interpret them as terrorists."
The Bush administration is glad to define a "terrorist" as anyone who uses violence against occupation troops. And many U.S. news outlets parrot the claim. But that is flagrant manipulation of language.
Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121200124.html
Murtha offered a rebuttal to Bush's comparison to the American experience. "If they'd have kept the French here after 1776 . . . we'd have thrown them out," he said. "And that's what I say about what's happening in Iraq right now. The Iraqis are not against democracy. They're against our occupation."
Some of the five questions Bush later took from the audience also challenged his assertions. Faeze Woodville, 44, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Iran and now living in nearby Strafford, Pa., asked why he keeps linking the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the Iraq war despite no evidence of a direct connection. The president said "9/11 changed my look on foreign policy" and he learned "that if we see a threat we've got to deal with it."
Woodville said in an interview afterward that she felt Bush ducked her question. "He must think we're morons," she said. "There is no link, and he knows it as well as I. And I and others in the audience are insulted that he thinks we don't read, don't think, don't have any opinions."
¶ 13.12.05
