Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Bush and the Iraqi Civil War.



You'd think that a President, that starts a war for no good reason, would at least be cognizant of what was actually happening with it.

On March 21st, Bush said, "We all recognized that there is violence, that there is sectarian violence. But the way I look at the situation is, the Iraqis looked and decided not to go into civil war." Just like all the other "situations" Bush has looked at, his conclusions are once again wrong.

Now I don't expect you to take my word for it. I have no personal experience with Iraq. But people who do have a quite different assessment.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The conflict in Iraq is not marked by front lines or raging
battles between warring Iraqi factions. There is no Green Line separating
sectarian militias, as in Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s, nor are there clearly
defined armies and commanders.

But by any measure, Iraqis will tell you their country is embroiled in what
amounts to civil war.
Since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya mosque, a
Shiite Muslim shrine in the city of Samarra, waves of suicide bomb attacks have
struck other Shiite targets, killing hundreds of civilians.

They have been followed by reprisals in the forms of assassinations and
kidnappings, with hundreds of Sunni Muslims found bound, gagged and shot in the
head across Baghdad and surrounding towns.

"We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the
country, if not more," former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the British
Broadcasting Corp. last month. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what
civil war is."

The dictionary definition says a civil war involves war between geographical
sections or political factions of the same nation. Many U.S. and Iraqi officials
insist that the violent insurgency engulfing the country does not constitute
civil war.


1 comment:

  1. There's the distinct possibility that Bush's handlers/briefers/flunkies used polysyllabic words to explain to him the nature of the conflict on the ground in Iraq.

    ReplyDelete

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

John Stuart Mill (May 20 1806 – May 8 1873)