Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The return of Saddam...?

When that famed statue fell in Baghdad, a nutty friend of mine offered a startling prediction -- a prediction derived from a unique and unfathomable reading of Revelation, an evocative fortune cookie text, old issues of Dr. Strange, and a garbled answering machine message left by either an angry creditor or Jehovah. My illuminated friend insisted that, one day, Saddam Hussein would come back to power in Iraq.

Being, on occasion, a gentleman, I tried not to guffaw too loudly at this mad prophecy.

And then I read the following. As you might imagine, my jaw hit the ground with a enough force to crack the pavement. This comes from a blog called Cytations:
But after watching the Kurds recently lower the Iraqi flag as a sign of secession, the Southern Shiite clans of Iraq have decided to bear arms and join the resistance. They also demanded the return of Saddam to power.

The flag lowering also alienated many Kurds.

The Northern Iraqi clans and the clans of Baghdad had recently made a similar decision to join the resistance.
(Emphasis added) Can you buh-LEEEVE this? The Iraqi Shi'ite community, which Saddam Hussein (who is Sunni) treated like crap, has now become so thoroughly angered by the American occupation that a number of Shi'ites have decided that they would prefer to have the old bastard back in power?

Here is the actual statement of the Sh'ite clans, in English. An excerpt:
We learned from the Occupation the lesson that Iraq will never ever enjoy stability and will never ever be prosperous and that the dignity of its women and men will never ever be safeguarded without the existence of a strong and central leadership which asserts the law of justice and strikes with an iron hand the evildoers, the destroyers and the plotters. His Excellency the President Saddam Hussein was, and still is, the only one capable of providing all of those things for every Iraqi man and every Iraqi woman. The return of his Excellency will mean the return of security and stability and the end of the murders, rapes, plunder, humiliation, state disrespect, wide spread corruption and daylight robberies, in order to regain sovereignty and independence.
(Emphasis added.) I cannot believe that this statement reflects the sentiment of all or even most Shi'ites in Iraq. Is this text a forgery? Disinformation?

If it isn't -- and if the U.S. news media draws attention to it -- even the most doltish Americans will finally understand just how thoroughly we've failed in Iraq.

(Many thanks to Ga...er, "Zontar" for bringing this matter to my attention.)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interestingly enough Joe, I have always said Saddem will be back in power too. They may even try to kill him but he will not die.
In the Bible , a "head" refers to a government. "A mortal head wound" could be exactly what old story tellers described as Saddem loosing power and then returning. And does everyone remember Saddem wrote a Quran in HIS OWN BLOOD? How many muslims do that?

Joseph Cannon said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

hey, i saw this morning (democracynow) where saddam announced with some insistence in court that he would, in fact, return to power.

if we pull out, i would have little doubt that might happen. wonder what that might look like, now that he has been on the receiving end of injustices, humiliation, and threat of death. i doubt any changes toward benevolence would come from a contrite heart, but i can sure imagine his becoming a model magnanimous despot, just to show his captors up as the brutes they(we) are.

--Blue Girl said...

My son is a linguist and fluent in Arabic. If you could locate the original Arabic, we can get a translation. Just email it to me. My email is available from my profile page.

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