Red Crescent director, wife found dead in northern Iraq

Yahooo News via AFP ^ | 4/10/04

[Happy2BMe]

"We cannot easily move forward with reconstruction now."

I have three (realistic) predictions on Iraq:

#1: The New Transitional Iraqi Government will take power in June - of 2005.

#2: The United States Armed Forces will remain in Iraq - till 2015.

#3: The forces that are in Iraq now will be augmented by another 20 to 35 thousand by October of 2004.

[MeekOneGOP]

You're scaring me now ...

I went to your link, AFO, and they have updated the article apparently:

Red Crescent director, wife found dead in northern Iraq

38 minutes ago

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ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - The director of the Iraqi Red Crescent in the Kurdish city of Arbil and his wife have been murdered, a Red Crescent official revealed.

AFP/File Photo

The bodies of Barzan Omar Ahmad and his wife Sazane Ismail Abdullah, who also works at the Red Crescent, were discovered late Friday on a street in the Hay al-Intisar district of the main northern city of Mosul.

Hawar Fares said the murders were a "terrorist operation" carried out by gunmen, as bullets were found in the car.

Earlier Saturday, two people were wounded when a convoy carrying members of a security firm working with the US-led coalition was attacked in Mosul, an army spokesman said.

The city has been a hotbed of anti-coalition violence with near-daily attacks on US troops and their Iraqi allies.

[texasbluebell]

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

No sympathy here. This is the same Red Crecent that was allowing its ambulances to shuttle Palestinian terrorists to safety after committing atrocities in Israel and move explosives because they knew ambulances were a lot less likely to be checked (and could be twisted into a PR coup when Israel inevitably caught on to what was happening).

When you make a deal with the devil, you can't complain when the deal isn't what you thought it was. Let this lesson burn in real good. When you kowtow to terrorists, the price you pay is death by the very hands that you are aiding. Spain could learn from this.

[DoughtyOne]

In their defense, these new Iraqi police forces are up against some pretty stiff odds. Most US police forces don't have to face tens of thousands of hostile former Republican Guard members in their midst, armed with military level arms.

As long as those Republican Guard members remain armed and coordinating their efforts, Iraq has no chance of calming down and becoming a successful nation as we would desire it. At least that's MO.

Even if it did level out in the short term, it would sink soon after we left, again IMO.

[DoughtyOne]

I will say that if Iraq gets it's army built, it may be able to discount what I have said here, but that is problematic in that so many of it's ranks may infact be people who do not support a stable government of the model that we desire for them.

[WOSG]

There are so many rags killing so many rags that I can't always see the significance of the associations. "

Generally, the evil and violent ones are killing the moderate and decent ones.

Rec Crescent has been abused/politicized in the west bank, but not sure if that is the case here. Recall that A-Q terrorists bombed the red crescent building in October.

[WOSG]

You are right, it is a green force, and it seems has some infiltrators who are baddies which makes loyalties suspect. We recruited from former saddam's army and from the militias.

The untold story is that over a thousand Iraqi policemen have died so far. There is a lot of bravery along with some cowardice and our policement face criminals, not armed militias and foreign-supported *terrorists* looking to kill them daily.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

This country needs a constitutional monarchy. Find a king with suitable lineage (The late King Hussein's brother in Jordan has been mentioned, do not know if the Iraqis will take to him). Allow the 'friendly to the West' king to establish an army, unify the people around him and bring terrorists into submission.

We have Saddam. Let the Iraqis do the rest.

Democracy ain't gonna work in Iraq. It's too tribal and uneducated.

[WOSG]

"A paycheck will not buy courage, honor, or a sense of duty if the culture did not instill it before the hiring process. I have a feeling that it will be a difficult and frustrating process to find the right people, assuming they exist in adequate numbers in Iraq at all..."

Obviously the courage exists at some level in the Muslim world. Jihadists are willing to stare down US troops and it seems get taken out and killed in large numbers. They are willing to kill themselves in such "Jihads".

The stupidity is of course that this "courage" only involves engaging in destructive violence against democracy, the west etc. The Jihadist ethic that creates "Sharia" and the political mentality that has produced 3rd world hell-holes.

If we can turn that around - a "Jihad for Iraqi freedom and democracy" - then we could be getting somewhere.

What is that quote? .... "The best lack all conviction"

[areafiftyone]

Democracy ain't gonna work in Iraq. It's too tribal and uneducated.

I am beginning to believe you are right. A king would be a good thing for these people they can't handle democracy.

[freeangel]

And the next uprising will be the a$$h8!23 that cut and run demanding that they be paid.

[claudiustg]

---Democracy ain't gonna work in Iraq. It's too tribal and uneducated.

I am beginning to believe you are right. A king would be a good thing for these people they can't handle democracy.---

I've heard that part of the problem is with Arabic. Classical Arabic is the language of thought, of the university. The masses of people though they learn to read their dialect of Arabic cannot readily understand or read clasical Arabic. Even up until recent times, educated people in Western could read Latin and often Greek. Imagine if all important books were published in Latin. Classical Arabic has such a hold because it's the language of the Koran.

So, many of these people are technically literate, but completely lacking in the ready access to higher literary communication. So, if you quote Nietzsche to them they're not going to correct you. :^) A lot of them are just bootlicks for the Imams that tell them the will of Allah.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[veronica]

They kill their own. So what else is new....

[Valin]

What was the name of that Al Qaeda group operating in northern Iraq? Could it have been them?

[mrustow]

The director and his wife were killed by Iraqis as a protest against nepotism.

[McGavin999]

This is media hysterics. Read the Iraqi blogs and you'll find out the truth of it. The strike these guys called never happened, it was ignored. They turned up together at one mosque and the turnout was disappointing. I just read that Reuters sent out an article about Karbala where one of Sadars men was telling the reporters that all Iraqis hated Americans and a bunch of Iraqi people shoved him and said "Get out of here, we have families. Go cause trouble in your own town, get out of ours"

Doesn't sound all that serious to me.

[McGavin999]

They are in a pretty tough situation. They don't know if we are going to cut and run and then they and their families will be left to the mercy of those men. Remember in 1991 we left Iraq on it's own and 300,000 people were slaughtered.

Give them a little time, when they realize that we won't run, they'll rethink.

Besides, I just read that only 20% of them have run.