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state of the insurgency...,
2004-10-07 11:09:53
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new argument...,
2004-10-08 00:44:05
war on terror update:
Last night sunni radicals car-bombed a shi'ite
mosque in Pakistan killing 40, following a suicide bombing
of a Shi'ite mosque earlier this week that killed 31.
Later the same day in Egypt three explosions rocked
resorts on the Red Sea, killing over 40 people, about half of them Israeli. Tuesday the US vetoed its
80th UNSC resolution in 59 years, this one condemning
Israeli violence in Gaza. According to the UN since
September 29th 82 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli state,
while Palestinian groups have killed 5 Israelis.
For analysis see Juan Cole, who directs us likewise to a personal travel journal from an attorney at the New York Bar who recently visited his parent's native Iraq: there is no reconstruction, only destruction.
Note to John Edwards: you cannot see this if you just turn on your TV, and if you could you wouldn't be asking for this job. Just take the political circumstances - many a grunion at the New York Times or the occasional American GI has been quoted as attributing the following to "the culture":
no efforts have been made to involve the Iraqi people at large in the political process. Free elections at an early stage might have galvanised the population, but the idea was rejected by the occupation authorities, who were much more preoccupied with reforming the economy instead. The result is that the political situation in Iraq is tragically artificial and devoid of any real application to the fundamental problems that Iraqis are facing.
I saw the very sad effect of all this with my own eyes, when I met some young members of what is supposed to be Iraq's new political class. We discussed the upcoming parliamentary elections. When I asked what measures are being taken in order to ensure that these elections are going to be free and open, they assured me that they are trying their utmost to ensure that this will be the case. I asked to know what the details of these measures are and was informed that they had only had two meetings with American officials and nothing else. I mentioned the possibility of contacting electoral observers from the European Union or the Carter Center. They had never heard of electoral observers. I explained the concept and invited them to contact these or other similar institutions. They had no idea where to start, they did not know how to obtain their contact details, none of them spoke any languages other than Arabic, and so therefore they asked me to contact the relevant authorities for them. ...
Among the members of the lost generation of Iraqis, there is a sense that political discussion is utterly pointless, not only because it was forbidden for so long, but also because the result of politics in Iraq, the result of all the efforts that were made by the thousands that applied themselves from the 1950s onwards in order to ensure the social, economic and political evolution of their country, is the American occupation of Iraq, which is to say, total failure and humiliation.
:: posted by buermann @ 2004-10-08 00:02:15 CST |
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