Iraqi Government Threatens Martial Law

While the American media was focused on the vice president and the 9/11 Commission arguing over the meaning of the word "relationship," the incoming Iraqi government threatened to make a final mockery of the Bush administration's Mesopotamian adventure. Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan said the Iraqi authorities may resort to "exceptional" laws from the Saddamite days to quell the violence.

He also told Agence France Press, "From the old regime, there was a statute, which foresees exceptional measures, which do not violate rights of the citizens, that has never been abrogated." In other words, it's the revenge of the Saddamites. Worse, this just wasn't one minister saying something stupid. Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib warned that "martial law" may be necessary to halt the killings.

The Bush administration will have to go along should Iraqi fascism be re-imposed. The country is in the midst of a civil war, and it will likely intensify once the Americans hand over pretend sovereignty in ten days. The killings will mean that elections won't be held under the mistaken belief that they can't be held during times of national insecurity. Abe Lincoln's re-election in 1864 proves what a nonsense that is. But the world will buy the lie here as it did in Afghanistan, and as it did when the Americans chose to appoint rather than elect a governing council using ration books for voter registration.

The Bush administration sent the troops into Iraq to obliterate the threat posed by the Saddamite's weapons of mass destruction -- there are none. The 9/11 Commission says there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda despite the vice president's stubborn and fact-free insistence to the contrary. And now, the hope of establishing an Iraq that is democratic and free is hanging by a thread. In the immortal words of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "Quagmire."


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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