The appeal has been lost, Saddam Hussein hangs before January is over. Of course, it’s right and is just (is it…really?). He ill-treated his own people…once we had managed to get him in power. Accused of oppressing and even slaughtering Kurds and Shiites, waging war on Iran …all with weaponry, wink and a nod we had provided; went to war with Kuwait (once he’d advised us that was his intent and to which we promised turning a blind eye before taking our troops to assist the Kuwaitis) and then the inhabitants of that country were punished, by the West, with years of sanctions. Sept. 11, 2001 happened…nothing to do with Iraqi’s, by the way…several nations were enraged by and mourned the loss of almost 3,000 souls of varied nationality. To this heinous act a confession of sorts was made by one Osama Bin Laden. Not an Iraqi, did not live in Iraq, though oddly enough was leader to what is now considered to be an unholy band of assassins which we helped set up and encourage with Afghanistan to combat attempted invasion by Russia. We made a half-hearted attempt at revenge by shipping sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers to Afghanistan amidst macho promise to get the man…and others…responsible for this terrible deed and bring them to justice while greater plans were in the pipe stream to squelch terrorism further in…Iraq???

But wait a minute…what did Saddam Hussein and Iraq have to do with Sept. 11? Saddam had been a dictator imposing fear to many..but not all..his people, some destruction and terrorizing of his countrymen with, perhaps, a touch of paranoia and, perhaps, lived a life-style that left westerners cold but, refresh my memory, when did he last attack a Western nation, commit an act of aggression against us? There were many official “reasons” offered for an attack on him and his country, many others conjured up, unofficially, by those who opposed this pre-emptive strike and believed it to be wrong but which went unheeded. More than five years later Bin Laden is still roaming the all-concealing mountains (so they say), there does seem to be a handle on stemming the resurging poppy/drug problem but the Taliban are returning in large numbers; Iraq is a total mess with Iraqis slaughtering each other…it‘s a civil war which did not exist before we of the West arrived and the rest of the region is in turmoil; religious violence and destruction has now reared it’s ugly head; we now mourn more Western lives lost in this battle than we did in New York City on that frightful September morning. For many the world no longer turns on it’s axis but around what goes on day by interminable day in Iraq. And in less than thirty days a proclamation will come forth…”The Dictator Is Dead! Long Live…….???” Sometimes it IS “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t…”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 9:13 am and is filed under Iraq, National Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.