Arnaud de Borchgrave: Freedom's pitfalls ("two new Talibans in Iraq")

[Barrett808]

Freedom's pitfalls
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
December 31, 2005

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- At the risk of inflicting a mild case of gastric distress, democratic elections do not always work as prophylactics to safeguard freedom.

Iraq's national balloting has produced a widely predicted three-way split with Iran the clear winner. Iraqi commentator Ghassan Attiyah remarked, "In 21/2 years, Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq."

Its candidates defeated, the pro-Western, secular, unitary state has bitten the sand. People voted their ethnic and sectarian identities. Fundamentalist Shi'ites are now dominant. Washington's hopes for former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his secular coalition, and the neoconservatives' support for maverick Ahmad Chalabi, the current deputy prime minister, evaporated in the ballot box.

The minority Sunnis also have their fundamentalists. They have now opted for a leaf from the book of "democratic terrorists" written by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. The Sunni insurgency will continue, but it will have a democratic wing that sits in parliament, much as Hamas plans to sit in a new Palestinian parliament and Hezbollah sits in the Lebanese parliament while Iran funds its military component.

Gunrunning and narcotics trafficking supplements Iran's stipend. The Kurds are now in a position to slowly muscle the Arabs out of Kirkuk, the key to control of the northern oil fields, the city where Saddam Hussein had muscled the Arabs in.

In the south, the Bush administration is now dependent on the whims of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The former Tehran mayor recently displayed his dispassionate level-headedness by declaring Israel should be wiped off the map and that the World War II murder of 6 million Jews never occurred.

(more)

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20051230-084045-2610r.htm

[Fridays Child]

1. The Washington Times admits that B*sh has made a mess of Iraq?

That cold day in hell is finally here.

[Fovea]

2. At the risk of inflicting a mild case of gastric distress

What an effete snob.

[C_U_L8R]

3. And they've created another Taliban...

right here in our own Country.

A christo-fascist Taliban of fundamentalist freaks and freeps
who jack off daily at the thought of holy war and rapture.
To hell with them... literally.

[Kahuna]

4. Heck of a job bushie!

:puke: