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London Zoo: Bush praises return of Baathists in Iraq

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      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2008 edited
     (493.1)
    What the FUCK?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7185602.stm
  2.  (493.2)
    wow.
    I'm speechless.
    •  
      CommentAuthorScribe
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2008
     (493.3)
    Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
    • CommentAuthorZeebo
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2008
     (493.4)
    Inside Robert Gates's mind:
    "Excellent. Now we'll exit on a high note of the surges actually "working" and reconciliation being made. No one will think to blame us again when there's another crapfest six months from now."

    Inside George Bush's mind:
    "PUPPIES!"
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeJan 13th 2008
     (493.5)
    Around three million Iraqis were members of the Ba'ath party.

    That's roughly 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 adults.

    Joining was virtually mandatory if you were in any of the professions (doctor, lawyer etc); an academic or an officer in either the military or the police.

    Most Ba'ath party members were coerced into joining and like most members of the Communist Party in the old Eastern Bloc, they did the minimum they had to.

    "DeBa'athification" was a lousy idea from the start and contributed to the collapse of the Iraqi economy and infrastrufture.Furthermore it was applied unevenly and corruptly - Shia Ba'athists were allowed back into their jobs and public life quickly while Sunnis (and the proportion of Sunnis in the Ba'ath Party was much higher than for the other ethnic groups) were discriminated against. For many Sunnis the only way to get off the black list was to bribe officials.

    Of course some former Ba'athists - like former Interim President Iyad Allawi or current President of the Autonomous Kurdish Region Massoud Barzani were allowed to exercise power in Iraq all along.

    So this is a belated admission of stupid policy rather than some new depths of depravity that the Bushies have only just now plumbed.

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