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Thursday, April 29, 2004
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WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A HOLE, STOP DIGGING
The New York Times reports this morning that the Pentagon now believes the Falluja uprising, among others has been, in part, orchestrated by Saddam's elite counterterrorist squad. The team, known as M-14, is believed to have begun planning and collecting explosives even before the fall of Baghdad.
I have a couple of problems with this intelligence. Firstly, US intelligence in regards has thus far proven, less than stellar. Then there are the ethnic complications. The Ba'ath regime is almost exclusively Sunni. Until this morning, the Falluja madness was believed to be directed by that psychotic young Sader fellow. Sader is a Shi'a "cleric." The Sunni Ba'athists and the Shi'a religious zealots have a complicated history. This history involved the Ba'athists putting electrodes on Shi'a testicles and gouging some eyes out. As his father is an "honored guest" in Iran, it's likely that Iran has something to do with Sader's financing and support. Iran also has a complicated history with Ba'athist Iraq. You may have heard about the 8 year war they fought in which a million people were killed.
It strikes me as odd that these competing intrests would set aside their serious grievences (and no one who's never had electrodes on their testicles knows just HOW serious those grievences can be) to cooperate in picking on the new kid in town. I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, the Pentagon is desperate to tie this to Saddam. Actually, I'm praying that that's the case. Because if it's not, things are going to get very bad, very soon.
If this isn't more "sexed up" intelligence (and I haven't had much time to think about it one way or the other), it means one of two things. And neither is good. The first possiblity is that indeed both Saddam's former forces and the Iranian backed Shi' a have set aside their thirteen hundred year hate fuck for each other because they hate the United States more and have decided to let bygones be bygones. This is bad for obvious reasons. Or both are organizing and operating independently of one another. This is perhaps even worse. If this is a momentary truce, it won't long last and under the "you break it, you bought it" school of international relations, the United States isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
This could very well mean that in the very near future, there were be three sides killing one another indescriminately. This does not bode well for the people of Iraq, who could very well yearn for the peaceful days of Saddam. As ridiculous as this may sound, one would do well to remember that in the years immediately before and after the the collapse of the Soviet Union, the popularlity of Joseph Stalin went up remarkably. And there was very little shooting there.
This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. No matter who is president next January.
Oh, and good morning.
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