The Way Of Terrorism
Strangely enough, one of my first entries is about terrorism in Iraq. I've long been against the war; it's pretty clear at this point that this Administration "fudged" (to put it gently) a lot of the information used to drive the war authorization process forward. I distinctly remember thinking, at the time that there must be some highly secret intelligence, in Bush's possession. That was the only explanation for his actions. News reports and whatever sources I could read at the time simply didn't support rushing the country into an incredibly expensive war.
If we set aside the WMD aspect, we are left with the continuous claims of the administration before the war that terrorists had taken root in Iraq, and were supported by that government. Iraq did support terror, by paying Palestinian families of martyrs, but that is not the connection that the Administration implied. They implied terror; they implied a direct connection to Al Quaeda (note the spelling of the week).
No significant evidence of such a connection has been found. And yet...over the last few days there has been a serious round of terrorism in Baghdad. There are at least 200 wounded, at least 34 dead. Virtually all of them are Iraqis. This is not, in any shape or form, "resistance" fighting. What resistance murders dozens of its own people to make a "point" against an occupier? If "collaboration" is given as a reason, it is a fiction. The vast majority of the dead are regular Iraqi civilians, not police or anyone else who could be termed a collaborator.
I find the events of the past four days to be one of the strongest indicators we have yet seen of Iraq's former government being involved in terrorism. That they have shifted to this tactic so quickly, and with deadly effects, speaks volumes about who they are, and what they were and are prepared to do.
If new elements in Iraq are responsible for these atrocities, we need to root them out. The Iraqi people don't need foreign elements blowing them up, while they're trying to rebuild a society.
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Ross, Interesting idea. I've
Ross, Interesting idea. I've sort of gone numb from trying to figure out what I believed to be true six months ago from what I am told is true now. I've pretty much given up on trying to figure out exactly what explanations for the Iraq libervasion happened when, and whether they convinced me, because I simply can't remember.
But over the last few days, I too have come to wonder if the new terrorism means the government of Iraq was involved in terrorism before the war like Bush claimed.
Here's what I think. How much does it take for mid-level thugs who used to "be someone" under Saddam to find some fanatics, strap some bombs on them, and turn them loose on the population?
Suicide bombing the population is just the kind of thing that Ba'ath thugs would undertake in order to sow chaos, the better to regain their local power. For my money that's who's doing this, not (only) foreign elements.
So what if they are former Iraqi low-level guvmint thugs? How does the army and Iraqi security force deal with a native threat like that?