Saturday, September 01, 2007

Making Iraq Safe for Saddam Hussein

Bananas (apologies to Woody Allen) - that's the only word that adequately describes these nutcases.


Don Dunphy: Good afternoon. Wide World of Sports is in Iraq where we're going to bring you a live, on the spot assassination. They're going to kill the president of this lovely Mesopotamian country and replace him with a military dictatorship. And everybody is about as excited and tense as can be. The weather on this Sunday afternoon is perfect; and if you've just joined us, we've seen a series of colorful riots that started with the traditional bombing of the American embassy - a ritual as old as Baghdad itself.

Howard Cosell: This is tremendous, Don, just tremendous. The atmosphere heavy, uncertain, overtones of ugliness. A reminder, in a way, of how it was in March of 1964 at Miami Beach when Clay met Liston for the first time and nobody was certain how it would turn out. The crowd is tense; they've been here since ten this morning. And... and I think I see... the door beginning to open. Al-Maliki may be coming out. The door opens. It's he... it's Al-Maliki waving at the crowd. A shot rings out! He turns... he runs back toward the building, trying to get in. This crowd is going wild. He's caught in a crossfire of bullets. And down! It's over! It's all over for Al-Maliki!


Hullabaloo
Do read the rest [of the linked article on plans for an Iraqi coup to oust al-Maliki] to get an idea of how absurdly complicated this whole thing is. Just the fact that we all know about this and that American newspapers are printing this stuff is bizarre in itself. It's a public coup --- Americans and Iraqis alike are all reading about it and talking about it like it's a TV show and we're all waiting to see the finale.

The country needs to face what "pulling it off" means. They are planning to: "suspend the new constitution, declare a state of emergency and make the restoration of security its priority." Too bad Saddam isn't around to give them some pointers. Of course, they are allowing former Baathists in on this and Allawi knows his way around an execution, so his legacy will live on.
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