Iraq:
Bringing back Saddam Hussein's butchers

Apr 19, 2004

Last July, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a man some call the chief architect of the U.S. war on Iraq, declared, "There's an enormous eagerness among Iraqis to help us." Talking about the new "volunteer" Iraqi army, Wolfowitz said, "Seven thousand people [were] signing up in just the first 24 hours."

Nine months later, with an estimated 200,000 Iraqis organized by the U.S. into various armed forces, the first test came. Units were ordered into Fallujah and other cities to put down the insurrections that had suddenly flared up.

Many refused.

A senior U.S. Army officer admitted that overall perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the Iraqi army, civil defense police and other security forces had quit, changed sides, or otherwise failed to perform their duties during the rebellions in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities. In fact, the number was obviously higher. Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of the Pentagon, now on the Bush-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, called it, "...the collapse of the indigenous Iraqi security structures put in place by the Coalition Provisional Authority . . . Half of the army mutinied... elements of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, which is designed to be a national paramilitary force, also mutinied and may be implicated in the murder and mutilation of the four Americans which touched off the siege of Fallujah."

What's next? General John Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander over the Middle East, says the U.S. wants to bring back former middle and high level Iraqi military officials, that is, the very people who headed the repressive regime that kept Saddam Hussein in power. Hundreds of the butchers are to be appointed in coming weeks

Not a surprise. These are the very people the U.S. depended on to keep the Iraqi people under control during the years Saddam Hussein was supported by the U.S.

The U.S. has now come full circle, reinstalling the repressive parts of the old Saddam Hussein regime back in office, resting them on the graves of the tens of thousands of people killed by the U.S. war on Iraq during this last year.