July 19, 2004

Allawi watch

There's a full-court press to deny last week's story that our new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, summarily shot six or seven alleged insurgents to death in a police station while onlookers, including his armed U.S. escorts, watched. The Christian Science Monitor rounds up the latest developments here. The Australian newsman who broke the story, Paul McGeough, vigorously defended it over the weekend. The credibility of the story rests on the purported first-hand accounts of two Iraqis who saw it all. Here's what McGeogh said about them: "In an environment like Iraq it's very difficult to separate out what people are telling you from what they are hearing," he told the Nine Network. "In these two cases, these two men sat before me. They spoke reluctantly, they spoke carefully and considerately. "When I tested parts of their story they didn't suddenly provide information where none was available. "They seem to me to be telling what they had seen, they were believable too. "I had an independent set of Iraqi eyes and ears (of an interpreter) listening and watching on these interviews and that person, whom I have worked with for some time and who I trust, he found the stories believable." Blogger Mark Kleiman says that if the shootings did occur they were not executions but murders. Al-Sadr's newspaper reopened In another development, Allawi allowed the reopening of the newspaper of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The closing of the paper by the then-head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremmer, touched off al-Sadr's militia uprising, which led to bitter fighting with U.S. forces. A statement said Allawi took the action because he believes in freedom of the press. Middle East expert and blogger Juan Cole interprets it as an attempt to draw al-Sadr into Iraqi political life: "Allawi is clearly attempting to bring Muqtada and his movement in from the cold, and have them play a role in Iraqi civil and political society. The hope is that since the stick failed, perhaps carrots will be more successful." Al-Zarqawi group puts a bounty on Allawi's head A group led by suspected al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has offered a reward of $282,000 for the killing of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, according to a statement posted on an Islamist website. Small change compared with our $25 million offer for the head of Zarqawi – but still a lot of money.

Posted by tbrown at 12:02 PM

Justifications

There's been much said recently about how faulty intelligence may have led President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to bad decisions about Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction. I think there is plenty of evidence that Bush, at least, had determined to invade Iraq no matter what, including whether Iraq had the weapons or not. Here's what our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, had to say over the weekend: "He told Britain's ITV network that Bush and Blair 'should have been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction.' " 'That was not something that required a war,' he said. "He said the leaders may not have been sufficiently critical of intelligence on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. '' 'WMD was only one and I think in their mind, not really the most important one,'' he said. ''And so the doubts about the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was not as serious to them as it seemed to be to the rest of the world.' '' Exactly.

Posted by tbrown at 11:58 AM

Backing up Hersh

Seymour Hersh's allegation that youths were sodomized at Abu Ghraib is supported by this witness statement at The Washington Post's Web site (free site registration may be required). It is among the thousands of pages of documents submitted by Lt. Gen. Anthony Taguba as part of his report on the scandal. (Hat tip to reader Mike K.)

Posted by tbrown at 11:55 AM

In case you're counting

You may recall that after the Madrid train bombings, Osama bin Laden gave European nations assisting the U.S. in Iraq an ultimatum to stop within 90 days. By my calculation, that deadline was passed last Thursday.

Posted by tbrown at 11:54 AM