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By M'Hamed Ben Youssef

August 22-August 28 Issue

Tunis Hebdo - Page (French)    

The course of events does not seem to have proven false the prophecies of informed observers who predicted for the American Republicans a tragedy analogous to that of Vietnam for having occupied (what an absurdity!) Iraq, a sovereign country, under the false pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was absolutely false!

From Tunis Hebdo

Bush had promised a pacification within a month, a picnic really. Now the GIs have been fighting for two and a half years with “official losses” at about 2,000 dead and 15,000 wounded, that is to say 10% of the combat forces. Lately, in the ranks of the occupiers there have been an average of four killed per day. August is considered the darkest month yet for the Pentagon, with sixty killed in the first two weeks of this month.

The intense carnage is terrifying and the ubiquitous fighting has spread throughout Mesopotamia. During the month of July, the Baghdad morgue alone received 1,100 hundred cadavers of Iraqi civilians, most of who were men aged 15 to 45, most of them disfigured and unrecognizable …

Imagine the emotional shock in the U.S. when the remains of seventeen boys, killed during the same offensive and all from the same region arrived in Ohio! From now on, the president and his hawks seem to really have their hands and feet tied by the tenacity of the Iraqi resistance. It is showing the Americans that the “failure on Islamic land” of the world superpower is envisioned by more than one Chancellery [Department of State].

This grim dilemma and devastation has had direct negative effects, on one hand, on the American public opinion and, on the other, through the collateral damage in the entire world.

Today America is defied more and more almost everywhere. Here is a brief presentation of the situation:

Anti-War Protester in Front of the White House

-- America public opinion is shifting with a certain virulence
-- The GIs, returning home, want to have their voices heard and denounce the lies that were told to them in the Iraqi hell.
-- Hundreds of vigils against the war in Iraq are organized every Wednesday all over the United States.
-- Mothers who have lost their children in this dirty war continue to camp out in front of the Bush ranch, which they have besieged in Texas, where he is spending his vacation.

-- More and more first rate personalities in the U.S. - and elsewhere - such as Kissinger, are starting to express reservations on the handling of policy by their country.
-- In Congress, the Republican camp is more and more divided over the way the war is being conducted.

Faced with the doubt that is establishing itself everywhere in the land of Uncle Sam among the masses as well as the intelligentsia, it is clear that Bush, caught between a rock and a hard place, doesn’t know where to go. Furthermore, his popularity is at its lowest since his first inauguration. As a result, there is less respect in the world for his decisions and initiatives, which are treated with increasing caution. A loser or a future loser is not always welcome among his peers. Chirac should repeat endlessly that he “warned him, but in vain”… The consequences:

'Talks With Iraqi Resistance ... the Only Way Out of Iraq' [Arab News, Saudi Arabia]

-- The military alliance against Baghdad is being drastically reduced. The British have announced troop withdrawals. The Italians and the Japanese, with the ascension of the opposition to power in September, will do the same.

-- The Taliban are regaining control of Afghanistan. This is not surprising given that two thirds of the country was never pacified. Spain just lost seventeen of its soldiers at one time when their helicopter was fired at.

-- Venezuela is challenging the United States and its President Chavez has created a satellite television station specifically meant to counterbalance the “propaganda of CNN.”

-- The drafting of the Iraqi Constitution, the subject of serious disagreement, has been delayed. There is a risk that it will lead to the inevitable, civil war, even the splitting up of the country of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
-- Putin is shamelessly intervening to advise Bush to establish a calendar for withdrawal from Iraq, while there is still time.
-- Russia and China are organizing military maneuvers, like in the old days of “Stalinist” communism, to “fire blanks at the Pentagon.”

-- North Korea and Iran are publicly acting without paying heed to Washington’s threats. The first to perfect its atomic bomb and the latter to obtain it quickly. This is the providential bonus gift from the Iraqi Jihadists. Because the United States, in the current state of things and with the situation in the Gulf being what it is, is no longer in a position to wage two wars at once.

Chinese Troops At Military Exercises With Russia Called 'Peace Mission 2005'

Furthermore, Bush’s two main objectives, which he cites in all of his speeches, have not been attained. International terrorism has not been reduced and done away with as he had envisioned. Far from it! It is currently at its “apogee” with six times more attacks carried out annually in the world since September 11, often showing a surprising mastery of sophisticated technology.

As for the price of oil, for which the resident of the White House waged genocide on the Iraqis (there is talk of 100,000 killed) in the name of “democracy,” it is currently at record levels. There is talk of it rising to $74 per barrel by the middle of next year. At $60, it is causing the American economy to suffer, with rampant inflation. At $100 per barrel, the oil wells in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya or Venezuela would likely be conquered militarily!?

Certainly the formidable Condoleezza Rice has acted like a “she-devil” to try, if only a little, to polish her boss’s coat of arms, but the results are not always tangible. Newly promoted to the State Department, she had visited 48 countries during 13 different trips by the end of her first six months in that position. The all-time record has been beaten by this 66^th Secretary of State, one of the most influential women in the world, because Bush listens to her.

It must be acknowledged that for more than one of the world’s leaders, the weakening of the “American ogre” is not unwelcome. It allows, among other things, a reduction of the arrogance of the American decision-makers, makes them more accessible to the grievances of their weaker foreign counterparts, some of whom have lost sleep over the “extravagances made in the U.S.”

The guerilla war, a strategy chosen and planned out by Saddam Hussein before his fall, is functioning perfectly. It has proven to be a “great trap” against those who have undertaken this monstrous new crusade.

VIDEO FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD: SADDAM'S JUDGE

Judge Munir Hadad

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