From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Mon Feb 17 2003 - 12:32:36 MST
Damien Broderick writes:
>That piece in turn is well worth reading, and extremely disturbing:
>
>http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,896611,00.html
>
>Our hopes betrayed
>
>How a US blueprint for post-Saddam government quashed the hopes of
>democratic Iraqis.
>
>Kanan Makiya
>Sunday February 16, 2003
>The Observer
>
>The United States is on the verge of committing itself to a
>post-Saddam plan
>for a military government in Baghdad with Americans appointed to head Iraqi
>ministries, and American soldiers to patrol the streets of Iraqi cities.
>
>The plan, as dictated to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week by a
>United States-led delegation, further envisages the appointment by
>the US of
>an unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the
>Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this military government.
>
>The plan reverses a decade-long moral and financial commitment by the US to
>the Iraqi opposition, and is guaranteed to turn that opposition from the
>close ally it has always been during the 1990s into an opponent of the
>United States on the streets of Baghdad the day after liberation. [etc]
Hmmm, I must be missing something there. The article repeatedly refers to
"the plan" "the Plan" "the plan" but WHERE on Earth is the plan? It is the
age of hyperlinks, no? There are several links at the bottom of the page
referencing other similar articles, and to be fair, I clicked a few. But
nope, no plan. How unextropic of Kunan Makiya to titillate me with stories
of a really rotten American plan, and then just leave me hanging without the
plan. Can you say hyperbole kids? Sure, I knew you could.
This quote from a the paragraph above is somewhat telling - "as DICTATED (my
caps) to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week". If I had to guess, and
it seems I do, I'd guess that this is a case of "sour grapes". Someone is
apparently unhappy that the Americans are about to take out Saddam, but NOT
just hand over Iraq to them on a silver platter the next day. And well they
shouldn't, if the recipients of the plan lacked the basic administrative
foresight to bring along a stenographer or even a tape recorder to a meeting
which officially rolled out the plan.
RE
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