Node Of Evil - Fair And Balanced Reporting

Thursday, July 31, 2003

 
On the subject of U.S. political support in the Middle East generally, and in this case Iraq specifically, we have:

'. . . 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.'

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'Indeed, newspapers that have offended the Americans have been raided by US troops in the same way that the Americans have conducted raids on the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leader, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Hakim, is a member of the famous Interim Council - not exactly a bright way to keep a prominent Shia cleric on board. But the council itself is already the subject of much humour in Baghdad, not least because its first acts included the purchase of cars for all its members; a decision to work out of a former presidential palace; and - this the lunatic brainchild of the Pentagon-supported and convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi - the declaring of a national holiday every 9 April to honour Iraq's "liberation" from Saddam.'
(Robert Fisk, The Independent, July 31 2003. Fee-based subscription required.)



Andrew 8:54 AM : |

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