Iraqi insurgents are rejecting al-Qaida in favour of the political process. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad spent 5 days with an Iraqi resistance group during the constitutional vote, and found that al-Qaida involvement in the insurgency-particularly their tactic of targetting Iraqi police and soldiers-is both unwelcome and unwanted. Instead many Sunni are looking toward using the democratic process to achieve their ends.
posted by MadOwl
on Oct 27, 2005 -
42 comments
Damning leak for Blair / Bush! A leaked transcript of a senior British government meeting indicates that the Bush administration viewed war with Iraq as
"inevitable" as of July 2002, even though the rationale for war was
"thin" and that
"Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." It further states that the desire to bring about regime change was
"not a legal base for military action", and that the only legitimate reason to declare war was with UNSCOM approval. Most disturbingly, it indicates that there were
"strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change."
posted by insomnia_lj
on May 1, 2005 -
139 comments
Iraqi Citizens Fight Back: "The residents of a small Iraqi village have killed five insurgents who had
attacked them for voting in last weekend's national elections."
ABC Journalist Mark Willacy: "It would appear that people are getting sick of the insurgency. But certainly many people here see the insurgency as the work of foreigners who want to turn their country into some sort of Islamic state, like Afghanistan under the Taliban." On Sunday, insurgents
used a kidnapped boy with Down's syndrome as a
human bomb.
From IraqTheModel: "The poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".
posted by jenleigh
on Feb 4, 2005 -
99 comments
Iraqi-Americans Vote in Washington • Jeff Simmermon photographs & transcribes his experience with Iraqi-Americans at the polls in Washington DC on Sunday. "You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total fucking moron.... I took refuge in a knee-jerk liberal identity for a long time, but now it's threadbare and not as comfortable as it once was."
Lt. Smash responds.
posted by dhoyt
on Feb 2, 2005 -
65 comments
National Lampoon appears to be less than optimistic about the election in Iraq. Nevertheless, Bush seems to
expect much of what's depicted in that satire, he manages to maintain higher hopes in the end. I'm sure
Jim Henry would love to give a pre-election pep talk.
posted by ThePrawn
on Jan 28, 2005 -
16 comments
While Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declares a
"bitter war" against democracy,
Josh Muravchik suggests that Realists—"those who are skeptical of injecting issues of freedom, democracy and human rights into the conduct of foreign policy"—have historically been less in-step than pro-democracy Idealists. Responding to Bush's Inauguration Day comments about confronting tyranny in the coming years,
many Iranians cheered.
posted by jenleigh
on Jan 26, 2005 -
56 comments
