TNR contributing editor Eli Lake warns Bush critics against glorifying Iraqi shoe-thrower Muntader al-Zaidi, exposing the journalist's connections to violent Sunni resistance groups.
--Ben Eisler
Posted: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 3:13 PM with 17 comment(s)
I can't watch the video from here, but I'd think that if he does have ties to felons he's stupid for exposing himself with a misdemeanor?
So he has ties to the groups we made a deal with to achieve the Sunni Awakening? Shocking!
As I understand it, we didn't defeat the "Sunni Resistant" we beat the harder line elements and AQI. Many of the tribal sheiks Eli Lake mentions were in the resistance but switched sides when we made them a better offer and the abuses Lake mentions took place. If the network has ties to AQI or a similar group, that's news, otherwise it just shows that Iraq has a lot of factions that have committed violence.
"... connections to violent Sunni resistance groups."
Would these by any chance be related to the violent Sunni resistance groups that the "Surge" is predicated on American collaboration with? At any rate, I have my doubts that an honest search for clean hands in Iraq is not a useful or even potentially fruitful endeavor.
-- Eli Lake warns Bush critics against glorifying Iraqi shoe-thrower Muntader al-Zaidi
Having seen his worldview reduced to shreds these last five and a half years, Eli Lake appears reduced to inventing straw men to battle.
Amen, ndmackenzie.
I got to say, if the objective of Muslim extremism is to now throw shoes at their sworn enemies, I say: let 'em throw.
Over at that bastion of mainstream conservative thought that is The New Republic, Eli Lake warns the nutroots not to be too supportive of Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi "journalist" who threw his shoes at our President. I don't think they'll listen, but
Gee, a Sunni - whose people are 20% of Iraq, but used to run the place behind everyone's sweetheart Saddam Hussein, doesn't much care for the fact that this President offed his boy, and made his folks second-raters to the Shia majority.
Well, there's a shocker. Why don't y'all go ask the Shia and the Kurds whether they want Saddam back. Probably not.
Yes, many Iraqis have died since 2003. Had we not invaded, the same result would have obtained, with a different set of victims.
"Yes, many Iraqis have died since 2003. Had we not invaded, the same result would have obtained, with a different set of victims."
butchie, I agree fully with your read on the Sunni Shoecaster, but the above statement seems breathtakingly without context or minimal elaboration. In what way can one claim as a certainty that the same number of Iraqis would have died, even under a continued Saddam regime, than have died since 2003 under conditions of occupation, interethnic warfare, jihadi terrorism, and a collapsed national infrastructure?
Again, I'm phrasing it carefully above so as not to set out an assumption that any X or Y is directly responsible for mass Iraqi deaths.
The difference is that the number of deaths caused by the American invasion occurred over a temporary period of time and was more or less finite by the time the war was over. I say "more or less' because I don't think the deaths resulting from internecine fighting should be colloared upon America's neck.
Had Saddam remained in power, there would have been no end in sight to his atrocities.
BTW, has anyone here watched the mini series "House of Saddam"? Didn't the BBC do a very nice job of cleansing the sheretz? A more tragic hero one couldn't find even among the ancient Greeks.
nogal writes:
-- The difference is that the number of deaths caused by the American invasion occurred over a temporary period of time and was more or less finite by the time the war was over.
This must be one of the more lunatic arguments I've heard justifying the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
nogal continues:
-- I don't think the deaths resulting from internecine fighting should be colloared upon America's neck.
Of course these deaths should be collared on America's neck. These deaths were a consequence of the US invasion of Iraq and occurred at a time when the United States was singularly responsible for the safety and security of the Iraqi people.
nogal,
I have only watched the first half of the series so far, but the BBC by no means has cleaned up Saddam. He's a monster. Isn't that enough - that he's a monster?
I hope to watch the rest of the series tonight or tomorrow night. No spoilers, please!
Yeah - good point. I mean, what kind of immoral scum tries to negotiate with these Sunni insurgents?
I'm really happy we have a hard hitting journalist like Lake at TNR now to make all of these "asscoations" so clear. Well done!
"He's a monster. Isn't that enough - that he's a monster? "
Not really. The fact is, that he was not a monster. He was a very evil human being. My beef is that the series remained silent about his greatest atrocities, like Halabja, and tried to protray his invasion of Kuwait as quite reasonable, if not justified, and never mentioned the Iraqi Scud missiles or how much Israel and Zionism figured in his propaganda.
Anyway, I didn't think it was such a good and coherent production.
I heard the guy got 15 years in prison.
But I'm not sure if he got it for throwing the shoes, or for missing the target.
As for all the unsavory and nasty people the left too hastily supports, let's not forget that had the Bush administration [with its countless lies] not invaded Iraq in the first place you wouldn't be reading my words now any more than I was just listening to yours.
Historically, this planet was, is and probably always will be teeming with autocratic plutocracies in which a small sliver of the globe's population owns a vast percentage of the wealth and income. And, admittedly, to claim [as some do] that America is mostly responsible for this horrific injustice is no more the case than arguing [as others do] that America has led the fight to change it.
It is all about a planet with over 6,000,000,000 men, women and children----and the forces [sometimes very, very dark] that set out to slice up the pie in order get as much as they can for their own people.
Again, Mr. Zimmerman:
Democracies don't rule the world/you better get that through your head/this world is ruled by violence/but I guess that's better left unsaid.
Indeed, if more people understood the ways and wherewithal of the world's ruling cliques, a whole lot more people would be walking around right now without shoes on.
george walton
Rhubarbs writes:
George responds:
I gotta agree witth you on this one.
Remember in late 2006 [and into 2007] when the fighting was particularly fierce? You'd read the occasional story about the US striking a deal with one or another Iraqi faction. But over and again it was made crystal clear that in no way shape and form would it ever involve negociations with Iraqi factions that had American blood on their hands. But then during the lead up to the "surge" desparation started to sink in. In other words, whatever the hell worked as long as it allows us to get out of there without having to resort to helicopters on the embassy rooftop again.
Sure enough you began reading these stories about how "maybe", "possibly" some of these guys fought against the American and coalition of the willing soldiers. But none of the major media [to the best of my knowledge] chose to make this into a major story. Instead, this became just another example of the Pat Tillman treatment writ large. Or, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, "there are lies that we know about over there, lies that we don't know about, and lies that we never even thought we should know about."
NOGA WRITES:
GEORGE RESPONDS:
First, of course, let me get this out of the way: IT'S ALL GOD'S FAULT!!!!
Now, back down here on eath:
When Madeline Albright was asked on 60 minutes [in May of 1996] if the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children [caused by the US trade sanctions against Iraq] was justified, she told Lesley Stahl, "I think it was a tough choice, but the price---we think the price is worth it."
No doubt folks like Dick Cheney went apoplectic upon hearing at this typical commie, pinko spin.
But then we can't all be Spartan warriors like him, right?
And it's true, yes, that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. But he was no less a brutal dictator when Don Rumsfeld was gladhanding him in Baghdad in 1983. But back then [as the saying goes] he was OUR brutal dictator. We had to support him against the theocratic clerics in Tehran who came to power in 1979 by ousting the brutal dictator the US and Britain put in power back in the fifties. Here's how James Risen put it in The New York Times in 2000.
"The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran's government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps that derailed its original plans.
"Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist.
"The document shows that:
"Britain, fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup in 1952 and pressed the United States to mount a joint operation to remove the prime minister.
"The C.I.A. and S.I.S., the British intelligence service, handpicked Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and covertly funneled $5 million to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed.
"Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government.
"The shah's cowardice nearly killed the C.I.A. operation. Fearful of risking his throne, the Shah repeatedly refused to sign C.I.A.-written royal decrees to change the government. The agency arranged for the shah's twin sister, Princess Ashraf Pahlevi, and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the father of the Desert Storm commander, to act as intermediaries to try to keep him from wilting under pressure. He still fled the country just before the coup succeeded."
George:
And while we go back and forth about the morality of using torture today, this has always been weapon in the CIAs tool shed.
Here is Seymour Hersh's take on that in 1999:
"A former Iran analyst for the central intelligence agency said yesterday that his reports characterizing Shah Pahlevi as thirsty for power and a megalomaniac were repeatedly rejected by the agency as being contrary to official US policy.
"Jesse Leaf said in an interview that for five years had had been the chief CIA analyst on Iran before resigning from the agency in 1973.... A spokesman for the CIA confirmed that Mr. Leaf had been an employee there but said, "We will not discuss former employees."
"Mr. Leaf also said in the interview that he and his colleagues knew of the torture of Iranian dissenters by Savak, the Iranian secret police set up during the late 1950's by the Shah with help from the CIA. Furthermore, Mr. Leaf said, a senior CIA official was involved in instructing officials in the Savak on torture techniques, although Mr. Leaf said that to his knowledge no americans did any of the torturing. The CIA's torture seminars, Mr. Leaf said, "were based on German torture techniques from World War II."
"The Shah himself was "one of our sources" of information, Mr. Leaf said. "He was a regular contact for a case officer."
"Mr. Leaf said that because of the CIA's complacency about the Shah, no one considered protesting about the Savak's use of torture. "Why should we protest? We were on their side, remember?"
"Although the Iranian use of torture was widely known inside the agency, Mr. Leaf said, he knew of no Americans who admitted that they witnessed such treatment. 'I do remember seeing and being told of people who were there seeing the rooms and being told of torture. And I know that the torture rooms were toured and it was all paid for by the USA.'
"Mr. Leaf said he decided to resign from the CIA after receiving an adverse fitness report in 1973. His basic complaint, he said, was that "policy pretty much determines reporting rather than the other way around."
And did you know this:
Norm Dixon from GreenLeft:
"On August 18, the New York Times carried a front-page story headlined, “Officers say U.S. aided Iraq despite the use of gas”. Quoting anonymous US “senior military officers”, the NYT “revealed” that in the 1980s, the administration of US President Ronald Reagan covertly provided “critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war”. The story made a brief splash in the international media, then died.
"While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime's repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq's Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs."
And:
"Even William Safire, the right-wing...NYT columnist, on December 7, 1992, felt compelled to write that, 'Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [the US, Britain and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator'”.
"The August 17, 2002 NYT reported that, according to “senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program”, even though “senior officials of the Reagan administration publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents … President Reagan, vice president George Bush [senior] and senior national security aides never withdrew their support for the highly classified program in which more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq.”
But then Risen, Hersh, The Times, Dixon.....they are all pinko commies too, right?
George Walton