Node Of Evil - Fair And Balanced Reporting

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

 
Bremer on Iraq: It's all Hussein's Fault (of course)


'Bremer blamed the country's continuing electricity shortages on an antiquated system and sabotage by pro-Saddam insurgents.'

'"This is a problem we inherited from a regime that for 35 years underinvested in every aspect of this country," Bremer said.'

'He was responding to questions from an Iraqi reporter asking about when essential services finally would be restored to occupied Baghdad and other parts of the country.'

'The U.S. administrator said it would take months to get Iraq's phone service, destroyed during the war, in service. But he said a mobile telephone system could be working in the short term.'


Further down, we have two rather curious pieces of information about the insurgents fighting against the American forces in Iraq:


'"I think we pretty much know in general what we're up against here. We're facing a combination of Baathists, Fedayeen and ex-intelligence services operating without central control on a loose basis," Bremer said.'


Which doesn't quite jibe with this quote from Bremer in the same article:


'"The attacks which lead to casualties and confrontations are conducted by professionals . . ."'


O.k., so let's get this straight -- Hussein "loyalists" have sabatoged the electrical infrastructure while "professionals" from the whole spectrum of anti-US organizations continue to attack American troops and operate "without central control on a loose basis". This may be true, but I'm not sure why a professional terrorist type would, of his own accord, spontaneously attack American troops. Sure, the Fedayeen and Baathists don't like the Americans, but why aren't they attacking each other? After all, Hussein's regime wasn't very popular and it certainly wasn't religious. We already know that any links between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, for instance, were tenuous at best because of ideological differences between the two. It also seems odd that both groups would work, again spontaneously, towards the same end, i.e. discrediting the Anglo-American occupation force. If anything there would need to be some sort of agreement between the "Baathists" and the "Feydayeen" so that they didn't step on each other's toes. That speaks to prior planning, and tends not to support Bremer's assumption that these attacks are unplanned and spontaneous.


Andrew 10:45 AM : |

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