Posted on 05/20/2004 6:53:01 PM PDT by sathers
Well the reaction is quite natural that the locals would want a symbol of abuse destroyed. Alas, Iraq is not as simple as just ignorance and suspicion. The folks have lots of scores to settle with each other, and real fears about what the other two tribes will do to them. It is going to be very difficult to keep the lid on. It will require very inspired and talented local leadership, after the elections are held. The odds are the place will blow after the election. I suspect 2006 will be a very bad election for the GOP, particularly if Bush is reelected. Maybe the Pubbies should just cancel the election. :)
Might I add that I'm personally about as utilitarian as it gets. If everyone thought like me (i.e., if ignorance & superstition were nonexistent ;) then Iraq would be a peaceful, prosperous touchstone of human achievement.. =)
Alas, everyone does not think like me, and so life remains solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short..
It is mostly ignorance and superstition among members of congress to believe that destroying the prison will impress anyone in the Arab World who matters. Really shows great weakness.
Are you out of YOUR mind? This is a war zone and a election cycle. We do not need the prison to exist for evidence, we know what went on there before we were there and so do the Iraqis. Screw the holier than thou and sticking to your guns on this issue, there is absolutely no purpose for that prison to continue to exist. No innocents will die no evidence will be destroyed. The worst that will happen is that we spend a few bucks, whoopedy frickin doo.
And how dare you call me a liberal and think I agree with the demolition of the Branch Davidian Compound.
Abu Ghraib and Waco are such opposite issues, for one thing there are NO choldren in its basement and ALL evidence has been removed and calculated or otherwise why would we continue to spoil the evidence by its continued use?
Absurd, just absurd.
Many mistakes were made. For example, the US official in charge of prisons decided to work with Ali al-Jabouri, the warden of Abu Ghraib prison, apparently unaware of the prison's fearsome reputation as the place where tens of thousands perished under Saddam Hussein. The coalition rehabilitated Abu Ghraib and today uses it as a prison. The symbolism may be lost on the US administrators but it is not lost on Iraqis.
It's worth reading in its entirety IMHO: How to Get Out of Iraq. It's especially relevant with regard to Torie's comment, BTW.
PS. This was written well before the whole prison abuse scandal broke into the open.
Oh great, we can't manage our own affairs, let's manage other nations'! While at it, let's vote to destroy the ugly Stalinist skyscrapers in Moscow and all other formerly Communist cities! In San Francisoc or New York it takes envoronmental impact reviews, commissions, hearings, community protests, endless lawsuits, to raise some old shack, but in Baghdad, why, a stroke of a pen, law of the land! Let's make Iraq the 52nd state too!
Which of the three states will Bagdad be in?
Baghdad is a city of five million and home to large numbers of all three of Iraq's major constituent peoples. With skilled diplomacy, the United States or the United Nations might be able to arrange for a more liberal regime in Baghdad than would exist in the south. Kurdish and Shiite armed forces and police could provide security in their own sections of the capital, as well as work together in Sunni areas (with whatever local cooperation is possible) and in mixed areas. Such an arrangement in Iraq's capital is far from ideal, but it is better than an open-ended US commitment to being the police force of last resort in Iraq's capital.
Galbraith appears to suggest that Iraq be partitioned into three or four autonomous regions (possibly two in the South) with Baghdad as a sort of federal territory comparable to Washington DC or Canberra..
It's also possible he hasn't carried his formulation through quite that far, only envisioning an interim arrangement, but if so I'm doing it for him, because that is the proper course.. =)
Cool. Pity it strikes me as BS (it is just so freaking Rube Goldberg), unless the US stays around to police it all. That won't happen. I did read in the WSJ I think that Turkey is rethinking its opposition to a Kurdish state, but would freak if they got control of the northern oil fields. I guess a Kurdish state, as an autonomous Scotland plus or something, is OK for the Turks, as long as it stays impoverished.
Hey, it worked in Beirut right?
I assume you already have Israel marked down as the 51st state, ala Bill Buckley's proposal of way back when, thus making Iraq the 52nd.
I have no objection to the idea that we've slipped beyond the point when the situation is salvageable..
Agreed on the exorcism... pure evil had a home in that prison.
This from the left-wing Guardian about Labour Party Ann Clwyd's visiting Iraq.... http://politics.guardian.co.uk/interviews/comment/0,11660,982922,00.html
(snipped)
"In one of Iraq's most notorious prisons, Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, there were plastic shredders. They were a bit like an office paper shredder, except more robust, because they were designed to mince up old plastic. There, though, they were used to shred people. Just before the Americans arrived, Ms Clwyd says, the Iraqis "were executing all the remaining prisoners, and that's why nobody is found alive at any of the prisons".
But just before the war, Ms Clwyd met people in Kurdistan who had been in Abu Ghraib - "in fact they were the last people to come out alive" - and they confirmed the story. "People were either put in head first, or foot first. If you went in foot first, it took you longer."
She checked the story afterwards with someone from the prison "and they said yes, there were plastic shredders there and they were dismantled just before the military got there".
(snipped)
If they are going to spend our money on it, double it in size.
I'm sure they can capture enough criminals to fill it.
No, actually, I thought that if we could get as ridiculous as to have a democratically elected legislature vote with all the pomp and circumstance and proper parlamentary procedure to raise structures in foreign countries halfway across the globe, we could get equally ridiculous, skip a number, and name Iraq the 52nd state! As I said, there is lotsa ugly buildings elsewhere in the world, can we get our representatives to vote to destroy them? Personally, I never cared much for the pyramids.
Might I add, however, that if civil war does break out there is little reason to expect that the ultimate solution will prove that far different. There is little evidence that the Shiites would be capable of subjugating the Sunni, and in fact it's quite likely that the Shiites would fracture amongst themselves. Most likely, the Kurds would swiftly move toward independence, Baghdad would become a bombed out shell like Beirut, and the Arabs would pound on one another until they exhausted themselves into some kind of agreement.
Kirkuk would be a big mess too..
I think you have it right, more likely than not, unless neighboring states get into the act, one way or the other. What we need here is a bit of luck. There is a relatively good outcome out there about one to two standard deviations from the mean on the right side of the bell curve.
I watch some of this Congressional debate last night on C-Span and I thought what the hell were they wasting time on this for. The destruction or the non-destruction of Abu Ghraib is non of US's business. That is up to the Iraqi people, who as I heard tonight that 80% of them would really like it if they felt safe enough for us to get our asses out of their country.
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