End is near in Babylon

ERIC S. MARGOLIS

...As Iraq turns into a nightmare of carnage and hate, President Bush and mentor Dick Cheney rushed to the Mideast last week to urge their local allies to pull America’s bacon out of the fire. But Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Al Maliki, governs only over Baghdad’s US-protected Green Zone. The US controls what passes for Iraq’s police and armed forces. Maliki has no army of his own; his Shia supporters are divided and feuding. How can Bush expect a powerless prime minister to do what the mighty US cannot? (...) What western reporters term the Iraqi Army is really a collection of Shia militias, death squads and mercenaries, many former convicts. The US occupation’s extensive use of Shia death squads to fight the Sunni resistance has played a key role in igniting Iraq’s current sectarian bloodbath. This little-known story is a major scandal...

continua / continued