Haifa Zangana, The Guardian, February 28:
In a letter to a friend in Europe, Abdul Razaq al-Na’as, a Baghdad university professor in his 50s, grieved for his killed friends and colleagues. His letter concluded: “I wonder who is next!” He was. On January 28 al-Na’as drove from his office at Baghdad University. Two cars blocked his, and gunmen opened fire, killing him instantly.
Al-Na’as is not the first academic to be killed in the mayhem of the “new Iraq”. Hundreds of academics and scientists have met this fate since the March 2003 invasion. Baghdad universities alone have mourned the killing of over 80 members of staff. The minister of education stated recently that during 2005, 296 members of education staff were killed and 133 wounded.
Not one of these crimes has been investigated by the occupation forces or the interim governments. They leave that to international humanitarian groups and anti-war organisations. Among them is the Brussels Tribunal on Iraq, which has compiled a list to persuade the UN special rapporteur on summary executions to investigate the issue; they do so with the help of Iraqi academics, who risk their lives in the process. Their research shows that the victims have been men and women from all over Iraq, from different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds. Most were vocally opposed to the occupation. For the most part, they were killed in a fashion that suggests cold-blooded assassination. No one has claimed responsibility.
The key point of this article is reminding the world of the law of occupation:
“All foreign soldiers, diplomats or contractors implicated in the killing of Iraqi civilians are immune from arrest or trial in Iraq.” Both the British and US governments turn a blind eye to the systematic violations of human rights and murders committed by their clients in Iraq.
Meanwhile, back on planet Daniel Pipes, he believes the US and its allies have no responsibility in rebuilding Iraq:
“Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.”
In other words, the US has caused destruction on a massive scale in Saddam’s former nation, but it’s now up to the Iraqis alone to repair and rebuild. And this is a man regarded as some foreign policy realist?
Daniel Pipes has to be the biggest moron in the Northern hemisphere next to William Kristol.
yesterday, Kritol was saying that the Us occupation hadn’t been fighting “seriously enough” for hte past three years and that we needed more troops in Iraq. and then we have Pipes, the village idiot, declaring that we were in iraq to right wrongs but nonethelsss the wrongs our people did shoudl be overlooked.
What Pipes seem to ignore is that the Us set aside a budget for reconstruction that was entirely squandered and blown on security. and boy, does this guy show his true colours. apart from the fact that the statement cointradicts the por war stance that the invasino was to spread democracy, he shows utter contempt for huamn life when it’s that of an Arab.
How on earth can the adventure in Iraq not be a strategic disaster (describes as such by people far better positioned to know than he) if it is a humanitarian one? How can democracy and freedom even get to first base under the burden of bloodshed?
Does anyone get the feeling that Pipes is the moral canary down the mineshaft: how will people react if we blame the IRAQIS for the shithole we created, thereby justifying our getting out without any responsibility for even looking back?
If the Pipes line flies in the U.S., I reckon we can expect to see the troops home sooner than previously recogned (i.e. never).
Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.
What Pipes means is that while a civil war in Iraq would be a humanitarian disaster, it would be strategically useful to the Zionist cause. He is giving the game away that civil war in Iraq is in Israel’s interest.
You make a compelling argument Edward. I think Christopher Hitchens and Bill Pristol serve similar purposes. They are the litmus test of public opinion.
I still an trying toget my heaed around Pipes asserting that the reconstruction (ie. th erebulding of pretty much everything the US broke) is not the concern of the occupation.
“Unsurprisingly, his regime quickly fell to outside attack, proving to be the “cakewalk” that many analysts, including myself, had expected. That six-week victory remains a glory of American foreign policy and of the coalition forces. It also represents a personal achievement for President Bush, who made the key decisions.”
Ladies and gentlemen, here we have a human maggot who proudly sucks the scum of a retarded chimps smegma, licks his lips and says what a good boy am I. Thousands of Internet Porn sites while vying for exclusives are trying to figure out what category to put this behaviour into - is it Bestiality perhaps? Sado-Masochism is obvious, is there an element of self hate? Will there be movie? Daniel does
DallasCrawford.