Iraq — the election

No, not the showcase poll still scheduled for January 2005. I mean the one in November in the US. There are clear signs emerging of a strategy to refrain from heavy-handed military actions until after the election. Then the US will go for broke to ‘pacify’ or neutralise the parts of the country currently beyond their control. You can imagine what this will be like. Seymour Hersh was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. This is what he said:

“The real issue is what are we going to do in Iraq. Let’s assume Bush is going to be re-elected. We’re going to keep on bombing, and we’re going to escalate. We’re going to throw more shells, more artillery, more force at that country. The old cliche about Vietnam — that we had to destroy the country in order to save it. There’s no exit plan in America. There’s no noble plan. All that talk about outside influences and outside agitators. Most of the opposition comes from an insurgency fed by the Shia and tribal forces that weren’t given the democracy they asked for, that they were promised. We’re going to bomb and bomb and bomb — that’s our solution. And it’s crazy.”

Yep.