“Joseph Wilson, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 1988 to 1991, has called into question the Bush administration’s assertions about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa by revealing that he had been asked by the U.S. government to look into such claims — and had reported in early 2002 that they were unfounded. He is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.” Wilson writes that Alice in Wonderland is the most apt metaphor for the Iraq situation, “where nothing is as it seems” (see also the LA Times editorial, Cheney in Wonderland, incidentally) and the administration has “dragged us down a rabbit hole.” Wilson likens the Iraq situation to the mujaheddin insurgency (see below*) against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the ’80’s, an apt simile which is not in my opinion mentioned often enough, with full appreciation for the fact that that situation was the breeding ground for a generation of Islamic loyalist rebels including al Qaeda. Wilson finds administration distortions on Iraq unsurprising because we have accomplished so little of our original objectives there and are unlikely to do so. Wilson suggests that the administration was deluded in its intention to impose democracy on the region or, more cynically, that the anarchic Balkanization of Iraq was an acceptable or even desireable outcome. Wilson feels it is feasible to see Iraq as on the brink of fragmentation and factional civil war. The situation requires multilateralism, reconstruction, and a reasonable approach to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. “But before we can hope to win back international trust or start down a truly new path in Iraq, the administration has to start playing it straight, with the American people and with the world. Recent administration statements, including the president’s speech, suggest that it still prefers to live in a fantasy world.” San Jose Mercury News op-ed
*Related: Iraqi police ready to turn guns on US troops:
“Iraqi policemen declared themselves holy warriors yesterday and vowed to take revenge for the deaths of their comrades in the town where ten police and a security guard were killed on Friday in the worst ‘friendly fire’ incident of the Iraq conflict. ‘I am full of hatred for the Americans and I am ready to kill them,’ said Arkan Adanan, who was injured in the shoulder early on Friday morning when US troops poured rifle and machinegun fire into three police vehicles that were chasing suspected bandits.
‘All Fallujah people are Mujahidin and they care only about killing Americans. We don’t care about their powerful weapons, because we know that if we die we will become martyrs.'” Times of London
