Virgil Goode, Terrorist Sympathizer?

Posted on January 5, 2007 by Mash

Virgil Goode meets Keith Ellison

Today Keith Ellison met Virgil Goode on the floor of the House of Representatives. Why does Virgil Goode hate America?

Before his meeting with Goode, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim in Congress. Ellison used Thomas Jefferson’s English translation of the Koran for his ceremonial swearing-in.

Keith Ellison sworn in with Thomas Jefferson's translation of the Koran

Keith Ellison also penned an op-ed in the Washington Post today titled "Choose Generosity, Not Exclusion". Here’s an excerpt:

Recently, I have become the focus of some criticism for my use of the Qu’ran for my ceremonial swearing in. Let me be clear, I am going to be sworn into office like all members of Congress. I am going to swear to uphold the United States Constitution. We seem to have lost the political vision of our founding document — a vision of inclusion, tolerance and generosity.

I do not blame my critics for subscribing to a politics of scarcity and intolerance. However, I believe we all must project a new politics of generosity and inclusion This is the vision of the diverse coalition in my Congressional district. My constituents in Minnesota elected me to fight for a new politics in which a loving nation guarantees health care for all of its people; a new politics in which executive pay may not skyrocket while workers do not have enough to care for their families. I was elected to articulate a new politics in which no one is cut out of the American dream, not immigrants, not gays, not poor people, not even a Muslim committed to serve his nation.

Poor Virgil.

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Madam Speaker

Posted on January 4, 2007 by Mash

Speaker Nancy PelosiToday Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the House of Representatives.

Congratulations Madam Speaker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The New York Times Plays High Stakes Iraqi Politics

Posted on January 3, 2007 by Mash

Mowaffak al-RubaieThe New York Times just implicated Iraq’s Mr. Fix-it in the Saddam execution video debacle. Get ready for aftershocks.

In its report on Iraq’s alleged investigation into the Saddam execution, there is this startling passage:

As his aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry, one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.

In one casual passage, the New York Times drops a bombshell.

Mr. al-Rubaie is not just anyone in Iraq. He is the link between the Americans and the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. He is also the go-between to Moqtada al-Sadr. He has been involved with the Dawa Party since its days as a major terrorist organization. In the 1980s, he was the Dawa Party’s international spokesman.

In 2004, when George W Bush visited Iraq he reached out to Ayatollah al-Sistani through Mr. al-Rubaie:

American officials in Iraq are well aware of al-Rubaie’s ability to navigate in both worlds; when President Bush landed in Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner, clearly he’d been briefed. As al-Rubaie remembers their encounter, the president pointed at him and said, "Dr. al-Rubaie, I want you to convey this message to Mr. Sistani. Tell him that I pray to the same god he prays to… Tell Sistani I have nothing but praise for your religion. I have many millions of Muslims in my country back home."

Mr. al-Rubaie also was instrumental in getting Moqtada al-Sadr into the current Iraqi government. In 2004, Mr. al-Rubaie fell out with then Prime Minister Allawi over how to confront Moqtada al-Sadr:

The approach appears to be straining the Iraqi government as well. On Monday, the office of Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, had been relieved of his duties and replaced with a close ally of Dr. Allawi, Qassim Daoud.

The precise reasons for Dr. Rubaie’s dismissal were unclear, but he and Dr. Allawi disagreed sharply over how to quell the insurgency and, in particular, how to deal with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric. While Dr. Rubaie favors coaxing Mr. Sadr into the political mainstream, Dr. Allawi is demanding Mr. Sadr’s surrender first.

Mr. al-Rubaie has since played a crucial role in positioning the Dawa Party in the center of the Iraqi governmental pie. Last summer he wrote a Washington Post op-ed sketching out a "road map" for an American withdrawal from Iraq while leaving the keys with the Dawa Party.

In short, Mr. al-Rubaie is a powerful man in the current Iraqi government with all the right connections. If he is implicated in the Saddam execution fiasco, it will also implicate the Dawa Party and Ayatollah al-Sistani. If al-Rubaie falls, so falls the Dawa Party. With Maliki weakened and al-Sadr targeted by the Americans, this could be the beginning of a coup attempt in Baghdad. The only Shia party that can gain from such a coup is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Suddenly, Mr. Bush’s photo-op with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim comes into focus.

Update: The New York Times has removed the reference to Mr. al-Rubaie from the web edition of the article. The changed passage reads:

A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.

MSNBC reports that Mr. al-Faroun, who was quoted in the New York Times article, is now retracting his accusation:

On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of possible responsibility for the leaked video. “I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press. “But I saw two of the government officials who were … present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces,” al-Faroon said in a telephone interview. … The New York Times on Wednesday reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper “one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser.” The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him Wednesday. His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.

The plot thickens.

 

Posted in Foreign Policy, Iraq | 5 Comments

Saddam Hussein Died A Muslim

Posted on January 1, 2007 by Mash

The title of this post is a statement of fact. Before the hate mail starts to pour in, let me explain…No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

When I wrote my previous post, the ghastly cell phone video [CNN’s sanitized version is here] of Saddam Hussein’s execution had not yet surfaced. I had argued then that the execution would make a martyr out of Saddam. Now I am certain of it.

Saddam died reciting the Shahada, which is the first of the Five Pillars of Islam. The Shahada is the Muslim testimony of faith: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger." Saddam recited the longer form: "I testify that there is no god but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is his messenger." To become a Muslim, one has to recite the Shahada, usually in front of two other Muslims. Muslims will also recite the Shahada, as Saddam did, moments before death.

Every Muslim, including myself, knows the Shahada, in its original Arabic, by heart. The spectacle of Saddam Hussein, while he was being taunted by masked men moments before his death, reciting the Shahada had the effect of humanizing him to the Muslim world. The fact that the execution took place on Eid-ul-Azha did not particularly help his executioners’ cause with the Muslim world. The timing of the execution was an affront to Muslims – protestations that it was the Iraqis, and not Washington, who decided the timing will fall on deaf ears in the Arab and Muslim world.

Before Saddam’s execution, I did not think it was possible to humanize the Butcher of Baghdad – I was wrong. During Saddam’s rule, he sent many people to the gallows and torture chambers. His cruelty was well known throughout the Arab world. Yet, by putting him to death in such mafia fashion, with his executioners in death squad garb, the thugs of Iraq and their benefactors in the Bush Administration have managed a Herculean feat. Through the power of video, they have managed to humanize a tyrant.

Perhaps it is a sign of the times. Already in Iraq many long for the stability of Saddam’s rule. It is not difficult to imagine that the men who executed Saddam, while chanting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!", are the same men who deposit tortured corpses of Sunni men, with drill holes in their heads, all around Iraq. The grainy execution video made it quite clear to anyone who was not paying attention that George W Bush has handed Iraq over to sectarian militias and death squads.

By some estimates, this new Iraq has already cost over 650,000 lives. Those numbers suggest that the thugs that rule Iraq today are far outpacing the deaths caused by Saddam Hussein’s regime. By comparison, Saddam looks good. This is a fine legacy for George W Bush and his war of choice.

 

Posted in Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Iraq, Islam | 9 Comments

The Dawa Party Finally Get Their Man

Posted on December 30, 2006 by Mash

Saddam and Rumsfeld

In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, on July 8, 1982, members of the Dawa Party, at the behest of Iran, tried to unsuccessfully assassinate Saddam Hussein in the town of Dujail. On December 30, 2006 the Dawa Party finally got their man.

Saddam Hussein’s hanging after a deeply flawed trial is not likely to increase the violence in Iraq. However, the hanging is likely to make the already remote possibility of political reconciliation that much more distant. The death of Saddam at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia will also rehabilitate Saddam Hussein’s legacy in the Arab world. The erstwhile Butcher of Baghdad will become a martyr of sorts – an Arab nationalist who resisted Western forces and died at the hands of an unholy alliance between Iranian and Western powers. Saddam will be remembered as a bloodier version of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Saddam Hussein will represent to Iraqi nationalists what Mohammed Mossadeqh represents to Iranians – a nationalist leader who was overthrown by Western powers for a few more barrels of oil.

There is simply no way around this fact – the United States of America allowed Saddam Hussein to be killed by the very pro-Iranian Shia party that is responsible for killing hundreds of Americans in terrorist bombings. The United States allowed Saddam to be killed for a crime he committed while he was an agent of America against Iran. These are the ironies of the American involvement in Iraq today. The occupying power has served up the head of Saddam to one of the warring parties engaged in a civil war. If the goal is to push Iraq further into civil war, today’s hanging will help achieve it.

While Mr. Maliki of the Dawa Party and Mr. Jabr, the death squad leader of SCIRI, were cooling their heels in Damascus in the Spring of 2003, they probably could not have imagined that just over 3 years later America would hand over Iraq and the head of Saddam Hussein to them and their Iranian backers. After all, they had fled to Syria and Iran because of their attacks against Saddam Hussein and American interests in Kuwait and Lebanon. After trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein in Dujail, the Dawa Party, on Iranian orders, exploded truck bombs at the American and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983:

The driver of the truck that exploded in an attack on the United States Embassy in Kuwait on Monday has reportedly been identified by Kuwaiti investigators as a pro-Iranian Moslem fundamentalist from Iraq.

According to diplomats in Kuwait and press reports there, the driver, who was killed, was 25-year-old Raad Mouchbil.

An Iraqi Embassy spokesman said in a statement issued in Kuwait that Mr. Mouchbil had already been condemned to death in Baghdad for what the statement said were ”criminal activities.”

The Iraqi spokesman said Mr. Mouchbil was a member of the banned Moslem fundamentalist pro-Iranian Al Dawa group in Baghdad. He described Mr. Mouchbil as having been a strong supporter of Iran’s policies.

The United States stepped up support for Saddam Hussein after the attacks by the Dawa Party. Iran and the Dawa Party terrorists were the enemy. And of course Saddam Hussein had oil and there was money to be made:

Another key element in the growing American involvement here is the planned construction of a $1 billion oil pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk refinery through Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba. The project, now under negotiation, would include a $570 million contract for the Bechtel Corporation.

From the American point of view, the pipeline, along with a second planned line through Saudi Arabia, would help tie Iraq to what are regarded as moderate pro-Western countries in the region. The Iraqi perspective is that having an American equity in the project – particularly that of Bechtel, whose former officers are prominent in the Reagan Administration – will guarantee its protection from Israel.

Iraq is now pumping about 700 million barrels of oil a day through its Turkish pipeline. A second pipeline through Syria, which supports Iran, was shut off by Damascus.

The United States has also granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years. Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi President here.

While Donald Rumsfeld, as the representative of the American President,  was negotiating for Bechtel and giving out map coordinates for chemical weapons attacks, there was no mention of the killings in Dujail or the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran.

So, now 14 years after Dujail, Saddam has been hanged for his response to an assassination attempt by the Dawa Party. Saddam’s response at the time was to kill over a hundred Shia of Dujail as retribution – and the United States turned a blind eye. Fourteen years after the fact the Butcher of Baghdad has himself been butchered by terrorists who themselves have American blood on their hands. Today’s killing does not look like justice to me – it looks like an assassination.

Posted in Foreign Policy, Iraq, Terrorism | 4 Comments