PRESIDENT George Bush is due to meet with his puppet Prime Minister of Iraq, Maliki, in the Jordanian capital of Amman, to discuss Bush’s policy for ‘one last push for victory’ in Iraq.
This policy has now been modified to include an intensification of the training of the Iraqi ‘security forces’, and the utilisation of Syria and Iran as ‘peacemakers’.
Syria and Iran are to have the job of pacifying various sections of the Iraqi population, as well as help in sealing off their borders with Iraq.
Already as part of this plan, the Syrian foreign minister has met the Iraqi puppet prime minister and announced that Syria will be recognising the puppet government.
To try to encourage this process, the leaders of the Bush administration have held their tongues and not made their expected condemnations of Syria after the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, the Lebanese right wing Phalangist leader.
Normally they would be the first to condemn Syria, right or wrong, but for the moment they have put getting out of the Iraqi quagmire before anything else.
However, the US and the UK lied their way to war to remove the Saddam regime, and have dug a very deep hole for themselves in Iraq after putting the pro-Iranian Shia parties into power, in the name of the victory of democracy.
In the month of October, this victory for democracy produced a record high death toll of 3,709 civilians, the previous highest being 3,590 for June.
These are the figures provided to a just published UN report by the Baghdad health ministry and the morgues. The UN report released yesterday also showed that more than two million people have fled their homes since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, while nearly 100,000 people are fleeing to Syria and Jordan every month, taking the total number estimated to have sought refuge abroad since the US-led invasion to 1.6 million.
The UN report warned that ‘the influence of armed militias is growing’ and that ‘hundreds of bodies continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad – handcuffed, blindfolded, the victims of execution-style killings. Many bear signs of torture, including holes drilled through their heads, and with parts of their bodies missing.’
The UN report says that: ‘Many witnesses reported that the perpetrators wear militia attire and even police or army uniforms.’ The UN report adds about this new democracy: ‘The situation of women has continued to deteriorate with increasing numbers becoming victims of either religious extremists or honour killings.
The report adds that arbitrary detentions without arrest warrants and allegations of torture are also serious concerns as are the reports that the UN regularly receives that ‘security forces are either infiltrated or act in collusion with militias, while police and military security operations continued to be based on massive sweeps’.
The report continues that because of mounting pressure, the puppet government has sacked at least 3,000 members of the interior ministry because they were under suspicion of being part of death squads.
No wonder that the Iranian leadership is laughing. As the chief of the Iranian revolutionary guards Maj-Gen Rahim Safavi said said on Monday about the US-UK effort: ‘They have tried hard and so far have spent $400bn in Iraq, but we are the beneficiaries.
‘Moreover, two of our major adversaries, Saddam and the Taleban, are no longer there and our influence in the region has increased to the extent that we are the strategic winner in the Middle East.’
Twenty thousand troops will make no difference to the Iraqi struggle. As soon as the US begins its big push the masses of Iraq will turn on its forces with a vengeance, and thoughts of an opportunist alliance of convenience with Iran and Syria will disintegrate.
The US-UK have failed in Iraq. In the days ahead their forces will be pushed out of the country.
Iraqis, free of occupation, will be able to have genuine elections, to elect a government capable of rebuilding their country.
