trashing a man's legacy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_en_mu/obit_owens

yahoo and EVERYONE else is going to say that Buck was the Hee Haw host which completely diminishes his contributions to country music. The man had so many hits, the Beatles loved him, and these obits are going to make him seem like a joke.

I weep with you today Dwight.

No wonder France didn't go along

No wonder France didn’t go along. They knew the truth.

France awaits the NeoCons apology.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11927856/


But on that very trip, there was also a secret contact made. The contact was brokered by the French intelligence service, sources say. Intelligence sources say that in a New York hotel room, CIA officers met with an intermediary who represented Sabri. All discussions between Sabri and the CIA were conducted through a "cutout," or third party. Through the intermediary, intelligence sources say, the CIA paid Sabri more than $100,000 in what was, essentially, "good-faith money." And for his part, Sabri, again through the intermediary, relayed information about Saddam’s actual capabilities.
…

For example, consider biological weapons, a key concern before the war. The CIA said Saddam had an "active" program for "R&D, production and weaponization" for biological agents such as anthrax. Intelligence sources say Sabri indicated Saddam had no significant, active biological weapons program. Sabri was right. After the war, it became clear that there was no program.
Another key issue was the nuclear question: How far away was Saddam from having a bomb? The CIA said if Saddam obtained enriched uranium, he could build a nuclear bomb in "several months to a year." Sabri said Saddam desperately wanted a bomb, but would need much more time than that. Sabri was more accurate.

A worse scenario than I imagined before

This is a disastrous outcome that I really hadn’t envisioned.

The prevention of a Sunni-Shia civil war should now be America's foremost priority in Iraq. Such a war might not only suck in Iraq's immediate neighbours, pitting Saudi-backed Sunnis against Iran-backed Shias.

Imagine if Iraq, instead of being the jumping off point for “democracy” in the middle east, was actually the Sarajevo (killing of Archduke Ferdinand) for a horrible regional war amongst the countries in the area.


From this article in the Economist:

SOMETIMES after people peer into an abyss, they have the sense to step back. For
the moment, however, Iraqis are continuing their march of folly. The bombing
last week of the Shias' revered Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra unleashed
the most intense sectarian violence since the American invasion and the toppling
of Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago. What began as a Sunni-dominated
insurgency against the occupiers is now beginning to look increasingly like a
civil war between Iraqis themselves. This is no doubt exactly what the mosque's
attackers were hoping for. Such a war would plunge Iraq deeper into mayhem and
mark the definitive failure of George Bush's vaunted “freedom” project in the
Middle East, not just in the eyes of Arabs but in those of Americans, too. In
the aftermath of the new violence, one poll showed Mr Bush's approval rating at
34%, the lowest of his presidency.

A schism not just in Iraq, but
also in Islam The prevention of a Sunni-Shia civil war should now be America's
foremost priority in Iraq. Such a war might not only suck in Iraq's immediate
neighbours, pitting Saudi-backed Sunnis against Iran-backed Shias. It might have
effects even further afield, along the Sunni-Shia fault-line that runs through
Islam as a whole (see article). At this point, however, it is no longer in the
power of the Americans alone to prevent such a catastrophe. It is primarily a
job for Iraqis themselves. And it is not so much a military job as a political
one. The Shia majority that came out on top in January's general election needs
urgently to show that it is willing to share real power with the parties that
represent the Sunni minority.

Until now, two menacing factors have
worked against this. First, most Sunni Arabs, who have run Iraq since its
creation nearly 90 years ago, seem bizarrely loth to admit that they number
barely a fifth of the population—and cannot see why they should not continue to
run the show. Hence their endorsement of the insurgents, even while electing
representatives to parliament. Second, the newly dominant Shia Arabs, with 60%
of the people, seem increasingly loth to grant the Sunnis a fair share in
government, especially since they seem unable or unwilling to stop insurgents
from carrying out sectarian outrages such as bombing the shrine. Many Shias now
think they simply can and must bash the Sunnis into submission—and may better be
able to do so once the ring-holding Americans and their allies go. Worse still,
the Shias are divided among themselves, with three of their parties competing
bitterly within the ruling alliance. After the shrine's bombing, many prominent
Shias actually blamed America for the deed. With so deep a reluctance to embrace
compromise or reason, what possible hope for the future?
Optimistic as it may
seem in the circumstances, the events surrounding the bombing of the shrine may
hasten the much-needed first big step towards forestalling all-out civil war:
the formation of a unity government embracing all the main ethnic and religious
factions. Though the new constitution gives the recently renominated prime
minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a couple more months to forge a ruling coalition,
he should speed things up before sectarian hatreds overtake the country. It is
vital that at least the four—and preferably the five—leading alliances in
parliament (the Islamist Shia list to which Dr Jaafari belongs, the Kurds, the
main Sunni Islamist group and the non-sectarian secularists led by Iyad Allawi,
a Shia who has Sunni partners) team up in a government. It is equally vital that
key ministries—defence, interior and finance, among others—be shared out, with
Sunnis getting serious ones, and that ministers are prevented from packing them,
as before, with cronies. And the Shias should respond to the urgings of
America's ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, that the present interior minister, a
Shia who is said to have allowed sectarian death squads to operate out of his
ministry, be sacked.
Once in place, it is no less essential that a unity
government amends the new constitution. Much of the constitution is sound, and
it was duly approved in a national referendum. All the same, it has become
increasingly vital to reassure the Sunnis both that their provinces will get a
fair share of future oil revenues and that a Shia “super-region” will not emerge
in the south and so break Iraq up. The hardest task of a new government will be
to disband militias and reintegrate them into genuinely national forces. So far,
most of the Iraqis recruited into the new Iraqi army have been Shia, and their
loyalty to the idea of a multi-confessional state is at best uncertain.
For
the Shia leadership, making compromises such as these will require a supreme
effort of self-control. Having been long oppressed, Iraq's Shias feel that they
are gathering strength and are owed their place in the sun. The insurgents have
sorely provoked them, striking mercilessly at their homes, markets and holy
places. Until recently, influential politicians and clergy, especially the
Shias' Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had succeeded, as outrage followed
atrocity, in restraining the hotheads from wholesale communal revenge. But their
words are now being less dutifully heeded.

America in the middle It
would be wrong to say that the insurgents are beating the Americans on the
battlefield. But they don't have to. The insurgents win merely by making Iraq
ungovernable. The occupying forces and their Iraqi allies have been losing fewer
men than before. But they are no longer the main targets. The Americans and
their allies must not stay indefinitely: virtually all Iraqis long for them to
go. Yet most of Iraq's elected leaders, struggling to build a coalition, agree
that an American rush for the exit would, at this stage, still be likelier to
provoke a descent into all-out civil war than prevent it.
The greater the
sectarian mayhem, the happier the insurgents. Only when the sour Sunni minority
is properly represented in a new government is there the faintest chance of
persuading enough of the insurgents and their supporters that they have a stake
in the new order. Dr Jaafari and his Shia friends have no time to lose. They
must compromise, and fast, or risk being left with only the rump of what was
once Iraq.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.