Oh my.

[MiaCulpa]

[Ian David]

1. Oh wow. That's Real. AWESOME! How George Bush became the new Saddam

How George Bush became the new Saddam



COVER STORY: Its strategies shattered, a desperate Washington is reaching out to the late dictator's henchmen.

Patrick Graham | Sep 20, 2007 | 10:04 am EST

It was embarrassing putting my flak jacket on backwards and sideways, but in the darkness of the Baghdad airport car park I couldn’t see anything. “Peterik, put the flak jacket on,” the South African security contractor was saying politely, impatiently. “You know the procedure if we are attacked.”

I didn’t. He explained. One of the chase vehicles would pull up beside us and someone would drag me out of the armoured car, away from the firing. If both drivers were unconscious—nice euphemism—he said I should try to run to the nearest army checkpoint. If the checkpoint was American, things might work out if they didn’t shoot first. If it was Iraqi . . . he didn’t elaborate.

Arriving in Baghdad has always been a little weird. Under Saddam Hussein it was like going into an orderly morgue; when he ran off after the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003 put an end to his Baathist party regime, the city became a chaotic mess. I lived in Iraq for almost two years, but after three years away I wasn’t quite ready for just how deserted and worn down the place seemed in the early evening. It was as if some kind of mildew was slowly rotting away at the edges of things, breaking down the city into urban compost.
Since 2003, more than 3,775 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, while nearly 7,500 Iraqi policemen and soldiers have died. For Iraq’s civilian population, the carnage has been almost incalculable. Last year alone, the UN estimated that 34,500 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded; other estimates are much higher. As the country’s ethnic divisions widen, especially between Iraq’s Arab Shia and Arab Sunni Muslims (the Kurds are the third major group), some two million people have been internally displaced, with another two million fleeing their homeland altogether. Entering Baghdad I could tell the Sunni neighbourhoods, ghettos really, by the blasts in the walls and the emptiness, courtesy of sectarian cleansing by the majority Shias. The side streets of the Shia districts seemed to have a little more life to them.

<snip>

This “Anbar Awakening” has been a slow process, beginning long before the recent U.S. “surge” that increased the number of American troops in Iraq by 30,000, to 180,000. But it is still a shaky union, a desperate marriage of convenience based on shared enemies: Iran, and the Sunnis’ former-friend-turned-foe al-Qaeda. Many of America’s new allies are former insurgents and Saddam Hussein loyalists (Saddam was a Sunni) who only a short while ago were routinely called terrorists, “anti-Iraqi fighters,” and “Baathist dead-enders.” They are suspicious of one another and strongly anti-American, although willing to work, for the moment, with the U.S. The leader and founder of the Anbar Awakening Council, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was recently killed by a roadside bomb outside his house in Ramadi, clearly an inside job of some kind for which al-Qaeda claimed credit. Only 10 days earlier, Abu Risha had met with George W. Bush during the President’s visit to Iraq, the photo op of death, apparently.

More:
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070920_100442_7900&source=srch&page=1

[Mz Pip]

4. Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[thereismore]

2. Oh my. Now we have to liberate...America? nt

[uppityperson]

3. does that mean bush killed mandela?

[Lex]

5. I think so.

nt

[Vilis Veritas]

6. To funny...Looks like a Swamp Rat post...

You got to love it when the REAL world starts to emulate DU's most talented.

Swamp Rat must be moonlighting...;-)

Peace.

[OwnedByFerrets]

7. Although there are similarities...

at least Sadaam could keep the country under control without killing a million Iraqi's......Monkeyboy cant and wont.

[Katherine Brengle]

8. "15 bitchy women take a hike?"

WTF.

[Whisp]

9. is this for real? the canadian Macleans

is really running this?
I find that hard to believe.

[Vilis Veritas]

10. Looks real...

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070920_100442_7900&source=srch&page=1

:shrug:

[Whisp]

11. wow. I think I'll pick one up then.

I am surprised, tho. good on them.

[Vilis Veritas]

12. Collectors Item for sure...

I wonder if I can get them to send me a hard copy to the states...?

Hmmm...