Jinn of Current Events

This is British investigative journalism at its finest. The Daily Telegraph: Though he is a colourful and eloquent figure, Mr Galloway does not wield much power or influence. He would not be the only Western European politician to have yielded to the temptations of Saddam. Others who acted as his apologists over many years must now be wondering what further documents will emerge from the ruins of the regime. I hope that any US and UK people who were in Saddam's pay will be prosecuted for treason to the full extent of the law. 

There was much talk in the initial stages of the ground war about the lack of a popular revolt among Shiites in southern Irak. Some even considered that it was a mistake to surround Basra and other major Shiite cities and drive straight to Baghdad, instead of using the local population against Saddam's Baathist regime. What we now see is that the plan fully achieved its primary objective, getting rid of Saddam and its regime, and that some Shiites are not quite as friendly to the Coalition as the Iraki Kurds are. In other words, we didn't let the Shiites manage their own liberation because the goal was NOT to create a second Shiite revolution. The first one, courtesy of Jimmy Carter in Iran in 1979, established a central pillar of Islamo-Fascism. It's not clear yet what will happen with radical Shiite trends in Irak, beyond the recent assassination of a "moderate" cleric, but at least the Coalition hasn't armed Shiite radicals and given them space to create a nightmare by merging with Iranian revolutionaries. Compare to the open Coalition support for Kurdish peshmergas and the immensely positive trends in the areas these were trusted to liberate.

Note: it would be nice if the drive to Baghdad could be celebrated and re-enacted in future years. Call it the Baghdad 500. Or Kuwait-Baghdad. Or Liberation Rally. Imagine the parties and the tough conditions, including sandstorms (remember those?).