Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told the jobless, uneducated and vulgar mob that gathered around him that the main “battle” in Iraq now is the one against the baathists. The baathists should be killed, he told the mob, and then Iraqi will stabilize. The last problem left in Iraq now is what is left of baathists!!
“The battle today is against the remnants of baathists,” he barked in speakers reading with difficulty from a paper [because he didn’t write it maybe!] “it is a critical battle. It is either to be or not to be,” he said quoting someone he never read or heard of, Shakespeare.
“We should never forget that the baathists killed hundreds of thousands of people,” he reminded the audience. In this time, when the government, which basically is led by Hakim and his kind, calls for a “national reconciliation,” Hakim appears on TV provoking people to kill each other. ‘the battle now is against them. They issued orders to kill you.”
Thousands of Iraqis were assassinated on ethnic and sectarian basis since the civil war started in Iraq back in May 2005. Since the former Iraqi prime minister soft spoken, devil-minded Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was seated, Iraq ha never rested. Since then, death squads started working openly in the streets and killed more than 100,000 Iraqis.
A few days ago, the current minister of interior, Jawad al-Bolani, came on TV telling his story [or as he called it “the security plan”]
The minister said:
- We will issue badges for the police men [I don’t know what were they waiting all these three years. Why didn’t they issue badges before? Or they thought there was no need because we are all Iraqis and we don’t need identification? At least 150 Iraqis are killed every month now, half of them assassinated by men dressed in Iraqi forces uniforms and the minister just now realizes that “wooops, they need badges.”
- We will give the police new uniforms and will paint the cars new colors [I was in a press conference held by the former interior minister Bayan Jabr, in which he said exactly the same thing. But I never saw the :”new uniforms” and “the new color of the police vehicles” I don’t know why they just say things. Bolani is the third interior minister in three years, who said these tings. But we never see them. You know what is funny; if you go to the ministry of interior records, you will find contracts for millions of dollars spent on “new uniforms and new cars.” !!!
- Issue a new law for carrying weapons in the streets and confiscate any weapon with no permission. [not until now you realized that it is important to control weapons in the street?
- We will punish those who violate the law and operate terrorist actions. We will announce the procedures at the end of August. [Why end of August? Doesn’t the government believe that Iraqis are being killed? Does it need to make sure that there are criminals and terrorists free in the streets killing people and after it made sure, it issues announces the punishments? At least 150 Iraqis are killed everyday. That is 4500 Iraqis to be killed this month until the interior minister realizes that he should announces the punishments. Is it new that terrorists are in the streets? They’ve been operating more freely than then the government forces and for three years. Why would it take until end of August to organize the plan? Is it like “ohhhh, we have terrorism in the country. woooops. We never new that. Lets plan” ???!!!!
The current government is designed to flame the civil war that is going in Iraq for more than a year now. the way it deals with the daily killings just shows how successful this government is in what it came for, killing more Iraqis. Until now, no Iraqi government official was honest and clear enough to go in public and say “we have a civil war in the country” although all indications show that we passed the suitable time for such a sentence. The right sentence a government official should say now is “HELP. We cannot stop the civil war in the country.” And then he should commit a suicide because he couldn’t help the people who elected him live a better life. That’s the right thing to do.
Hakim today urged the vulgar, uncivilized mob to carry weapons and wander around in the street. He repeated what al his kind of poisonous Mullahs always said: People should have weapons to defend themselves. The point is not to “defend” but to kill. With the lawless land of Iraq, using these weapons is just the easiest thing to do. And you can imagine people with weapons in a civil-war zone!
“We urge a rapid formation of the popular committees to be the backup for the government forces,” he barked. Hakim’s group runs a military wing called the Badr brigade and it is blamed for at least half of the assassinations in Iraq.
The “popular committees” are groups of jobless, blood-thirsty and stinky people who would carry weapons and shoot whoever they see. The point, Hakim and this kind of snakes said, is that those people could “defend” themselves against strangers or people disguising as police or Iraqi soldiers. But how would they know who is a real policemen or a soldier? It doesn’t matter as long as more Iraqis are killed!
But Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is still insisting that Iraq “will not witness a civil war” and that the instability is only in a “limited part of the country” and that “provinces other than Baghdad are living normal and peaceful life.” President George Bush on the other hand was somehow more frank when last week he admitted that the situation in Iraq is critical and not colorful, but nevertheless he also said that “progress is being made.” I think the Iraqis, all the Iraqis, need spectacles because we cant see the progress Maliki and Bush are seeing. It is not possible that 25 million Iraqi are right and Maliki and Bush are wrong!
But……… a good evidence that progress is being made is that more U.S. troops are called in to Baghdad and more Iraqis forces are deployed in Baghdad. I think just to spend the summer holidays?!
At 12:39 PM, 
The US will deploy some 3,000 stryker brigade troops to Baghdad soon. And believe me they are not their for summer vacation. They were actually on their way home, some already in Kuwait, when the orders came down to re-deply to Baghdad. And from what I have read, the Stryker Brigades are very, very good at pacifying cities & killing terrorists. read for yourself. http://americancitizensoldier.blogspot.com
At 12:53 PM,
24
I am angry and frustrated. Every time I think that Iraqi will start to talk to each other, that the sectarian murders will end, then I read something like that.
It seems that politicians only talk and look for bigger share of a pie, and in the meantime terrorists and bandits kill and instigate more murders.
The words failing me...........
At 5:42 PM, 
Original_Jeff
At 11:47 PM,
Do you have any news links to support this story 24? I looked for some but there were no quotes such as yours, I found this By Omar al-Ibadi and Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Thousands of Shi'ite civilians charged with guarding neighborhoods in Iraq marched through Baghdad on Wednesday to demand an end to the sectarian violence that is ravaging the country.
Young men in uniforms and headbands, members of what are known as the popular committees, chanted as a speaker urged them to protect the neighborhoods from the Saddam Hussein loyalists leading a Sunni insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government.
"Stamp on terrorism," he said.
The crowd included members of the Badr Organization, one of the armed Shi'ite groups that Sunni Arabs accuse of running militia death squads, a charge they deny.
"We have to benefit from this wide popular base, and the state and Iraqi people should form these popular regional committees from the best of our young men to face terrorism," Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite leaders, told the crowd.
"They will defend people of districts; Sunnis, Shi'ites, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. They do not differentiate between anybody."
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose reconciliation plan has failed to reduce sectarian bloodshed, has promised to disband the militias many fear will push the country into civil war.
"The first enemy is the Baathist Saddam loyalists and their henchmen, the Islamic extremists," Hakim said.
Officially, the event was held to mark the third anniversary of the death of Hakim's brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al- Hakim, in a bombing in the southern city of Najaf.
But the speeches also covered explosive issues such as federalism, which is opposed by Sunnis who fear it will leave them deprived of oil in resource-poor central Iraq. "
At 3:19 AM, 24 Steps to Liberty
Anonymous,
Regretfully, with the news from Israel and Lebanon there is not much left for the rest of the world. Im in the business and know that as a fact. That’s why I thought I have to write about it and quote people in the entry. But don’t worry, the story is true and the quotes are said by the people I say said them.
O Joy. More sectarian murder squads are to be set up by the Badrists who up to now have been working under the cover of the Interior Ministry. The US-supported Interior Ministry, I may add.
If they were only going to defenbd their neighbourhoods, that would be one thing ... but 10-1 they will take the fight to other people's houses.
What a mess.
At 9:15 AM,
Let's hope they throw out that do nothing Interior Minister and get someone with a semblance of
All those extra American and Iraqi TROOPS (not police) need to divide Baghdad and sweep through districts one by one rooting out the Mehdi, Badr and Sunni Militias. Too bad though that the heads of each of these militias have priminent positions in the Gov't.
No doubt this is messy but I still have faith that Iraqi's love life and peace more than death and war. When people stop reverting back to tribalism and sectarianism maybe a government can emerge with loyalites to the people more than their own sect/organization.
At 1:51 PM,
"Despite the claims of terrorist organizations, Israel's current two-front war is not just about land. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas fired rockets from Lebanon and Gaza well after Israel had withdrawn from both places.
Indeed, if sacred Arab ground were the driving force of the Middle East crisis, then surely Syria itself would now be willing to risk a shooting war over the all-important, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Meanwhile, Cairo is still perhaps the nexus of virulent Arab anti-Semitism, even though Israel finished handing over Sinai to Egypt in 1982.
The world prayed that after the unilateral departure of Israel from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, and the recent elections in Beirut and the West Bank, it was witnessing an incremental evolution toward a lasting peace between rational, democratic states. Gradually, Israel was returning to its 1967 borders. In response, gradually, it was hoped, Israel's Arab neighbors would vote into office reasonable statesmen who would renounce terror and get on with the business of crafting workable economies and governments. But all that optimism presupposed a radical change in the Middle Eastern mentality. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.
So, if the most recent war in Lebanon and Gaza is not about land per se, then whence arises the elemental desire to destroy Israel?
The answer boils down to Islamists feeling their reputation is at stake. Words like "honor" and "pride" are evoked - in the sense that they need to be regained - by every insecure radical in the Islamic world, from al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden to Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fist-shaking crowds, fiery mullahs and terrorists all boast of not giving an inch to infidels, and of the restoration of the now-sullied honor of the Islamic people.
Why their hurt?
For about the last half-century, globalization has passed most of the recalcitrant Middle East by - economically, socially and politically. The result is that few inventions and little science now emanate from the Islamic world - but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity (such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism), too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.
At one time or another, they have welcomed all the bankrupt ideologies that traditionally blame others for prior self-induced failure: fascism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism and, most recently, Islamic fundamentalism.
When there is high unemployment, corruption, zero economic growth, endemic illiteracy and no freedom, mullahs, dictators and jihadists of the Middle East always seem to fault the ancient colonial power - Britain, France or Italy (though rarely Islamic Turkey) - that supposedly set them back more than a century ago. Or they try blaming the omnipotent United States, whose oilmen developed the riches of the Gulf and whose military has saved Muslims from Kosovo to Kuwait.
But above all, for decades leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat and Mr. bin Laden have scapegoated tiny Israel.
It is the closest Western bogeyman, and its Holocaust survivors transformed an area of desert into a technologically sophisticated Western state. Israel's astounding success is a constant irritant to many nearby Muslims, representing the infidel's ability to fashion a prosperous Middle Eastern society without oil revenues under democratic auspices.
Victimization turns out to be the real creed of the Middle East, uniting disparate Shiites, Sunnis, dictators, theocrats and terrorists. "They did it to us" offers an easy explanation of why Islamic states are now weak and offer little hope to millions of their poor, who, ironically, emigrate to the much-pilloried West by the millions.
American cash aid, Israeli concessions, windfall petrol profits and, most of all, appeasement of radical Islamists can do nothing to alleviate these perceived grievances.
Instead, there will be no peace in the general Middle East until Iranians and Arabs have true constitutional government, free institutions, open markets and the rule of law. Without these reforms, they will continue to fail, seeking easy refuge in the shreds of mythical ancestral honor - and in this pathetic neurosis of blaming nearby Israel for the loss of it."
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His e-mail is author@victorhanson.com.
At 7:40 PM,
whence arises the elemental desire to destroy Israel?
whence rises the elemental desire for Israel to destory?
I read someone today ask what do you think the world would have thought if the english had responded to IRA attacks by missling Dublin and massacreing civilians?
Israel is not fighting for it's right to exist, Israel is existing because of the US, it is a horrible neighbor
listen to the soldiers talk about ourification in the 3rd broadcast..
At 7:58 PM,
The Victor Davis Hanson
are we really quoting from the neocon wetdream NRO (new republic online)? Who'd next Michael Leeden?
spare us pleeeas....is this one of those 'anything israel does is right by me' sites? lord help us.
poor poor little israel with is nuclear war heads, it's refugee camps, it aggressive courage under US protection fighting against big bad hezbollah who is all degraded and (how did vic put it? sullied honor?)
Gradually, Israel was returning to its 1967 borders oh yeah, neocon alert.
no matter how many propaganda tools you place all over the internet, only limited idiots or war mongers are going to buy this crap.
At 8:55 PM,
"It is admittedly difficult for Israel to have a regional strategy that is out-of-step with the U.S. administration-of-the-day. However, the neocon approach is not unchallenged, and Israel should not be providing its ticket back to the ascendancy. A U.S. return to proactive diplomacy, realism and multilateralism, with sustained and hard engagement that delivers concrete progress, would best serve its own, Israeli and regional interests. Israel should encourage this. Israel may even have to lead, for instance, in rethinking policy on Hamas or Syria, and should certainly work intensely with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in encouraging his efforts to reach a Palestinian national understanding as a basis for stable governance, security quiet and future peace negotiations. A policy that comes with a Jerusalem kosher stamp of approval might be viewed as less of an abomination in Washington.
Beyond that, Israel and its friends in the United States should seriously reconsider their alliances not only with the neocons, but also with the Christian Right. The largest "pro-Israel" lobby day during this crisis was mobilized by Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel, a believer in Armageddon with all its implications for a rather particular end to the Jewish story. This is just asking to become the mother of all dumb, self-defeating and morally abhorrent alliances.
Internationalist Republicans, Democrats and mainstream Israelis must construct an alternative narrative to the neocon nightmare, identifying shared interests in a policy that reestablishes American leadership, respect and credibility in the region by facilitating security and stability, pursuing conflict resolution and promoting the conditions for more open societies (as opposed to narrow election-worship). The last two years of the Bush presidency can be an opportunity for progress or an exercise in desperate damage limitation. It sounds counter-intuitive, but Israel should reflect on and even help reorient American expectations. "
Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva
At 9:54 PM,
Its sad really ...
The human potential in Iraq
is staggering ... It was the hope of the USA that Iraq freed from Saddam would have a moderating influence on Iran and Hezbolla.
The Iraqi citizens no more then
any westener on this issue ...
Is it Sunni/Shia deep hatred
(not amongst the general population) but amongst the extremists on both sides ???
Or is it more of loss of power
for the Baathists more so then religion ... its time to address
the root cause amongst the factions
Only then will peace come to Iraq ...
When, oh when, oh when will the tormentors of Iraq,such as Hakim, be caught in their own nets?
They urge Iraqis to murder their fellow citizens and to destroy any good thing that starts to grow in Iraq. But when will some blackhearted criminal in Iraq give them a taste of what they beg for?