June 30th, 2004

The Party Line

One needs no more evidence that the Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq is a full parnter with the US web of disinformation about the Iraq war than this quote from last night’s interview with Tom Brokaw:

Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And — the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.

At least this time our man in Bagdad didn’t nod his head in agreement:

Brokaw: Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.

There’s a partial transcript of the interview here.

The US is truly remaking Iraq in its own image, complete with the faith based politics embraced by our own leader. The administration’s stonewalling in the face of facts is hard to take on any day, but watching the supposedly independant Prime Minister of Iraq parrot the party line so accurately made my stomach turn.

Saddam was a tyrant and and a dictator and I’ve no doubt that many people in Iraq are happy to see him deposed. But I don’t understand how the new Iraqi government can stand on the same rhetoric that we used to justify the war. Does Allawi really think it’s okay that we bombed the shit out of Iraq in after 9-11, even if it was in supposed self-defense?

Google turns up a few interesting things about Allawi and his ties to the CIA (during the Bush senior years) and unspecified business interests in Saudi Arabia.

What did Condi say? (Can’t find the quote, sorry.) Something like, “Make no mistake about it, they will have an independant and sovereign government.”

posted by pam in politics (woe is us) 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 5:45 am and is filed under politics (woe is us). You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “The Party Line”

  1. david says:

    I didn’t see the interview so I don’t know the full context, but if the “this” in:

    We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York

    refers to the recent insurgency in Iraq then I think he’s probably right. There was a chilling interview with Michael Ware (Australian reporter with Time) on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN on June 28. (I can’t find a transcript now but it might turn up here one day.) He’s been reporting on the Iraq insurgency and has managed to get pretty close to the fighters. He reports of men, enraged at the US occupation of Iraq, that a year ago were nonetheless still drinking, smoking and whoring. Now, having been indoctrinated by al Qaeda, they’ve grown out their beards and are following the fundamentalist doctrine of the Koran. They’re no longer freedom fighters — they are now jihadists. This, of course, is exactly what UBL wanted. So, in that sense, I think the fighting in Iraq is related to 9/11. It just didn’t start out that way.

    June 30th, 2004 at 8:14 am
  2. pam says:

    Yeah, a similar spin came up in carpool this morning. Though it feels a like there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza.

    The current situation in Iraq is an extension of our reaction to what happened in New York. Recruiting is up because anti-American sentiment is high because we occupy Iraq. One could argue that we fostered that anti-American sentiment BY invading Iraq. We created the extension ourselves. We drew the line between New York and Saddam and then Allawi uses it as a handy tool for validating his power.

    I wish I could be more articulate about this issue, but I just feel like screaming instead.

    June 30th, 2004 at 1:41 pm