Another Useful Idiot

You remember Madeleine Albright, don’t you?
She was Clinton’s Secretary of State during the Rwanda genocide.
And still Secretary of State as Osama bin Laden grew from “an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster”, while he directed the bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the bombing of the destroyer U.S.S. Cole.
She wondered while on Fox News before the election in 2004, “Do you suppose that the Bush administration has Osama bin Laden hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election?"
In October of 2003 she wrote, “I regret not having done more to push for liberalization within the Arab world...We must be relentless in shaping a global consensus that terrorism is fully, fundamentally, and always wrong. No exceptions, no excuses. I made this argument to Arab leaders many times when I was secretary of state. The responses, however, were rarely satisfactory.”
And she had these words to say about Saddam Hussein, “Saddam doesn't care a fig about the Iraqi people, whom he has used and victimized. We will not allow Baghdad to get away with flagrantly violating U.N. resolutions.”
Well, she’s back.

The Bush administration's newly unveiled National Security Strategy might well be subtitled "The Irony of Iran." Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the invention of the phrase "axis of evil," the administration now highlights the threat posed by Iran — whose radical government has been vastly strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. This is more tragedy than strategy, and it reflects the Manichean approach this administration has taken to the world.

I wonder, Ms. Albright, how different our ‘strategy’ on Iran would be now if Mr. Hussein were still in power in Iraq? How much more complicated? How much more dangerous?
You seemed to understand the Iraq problem while Secretary of State under Clinton as you stated, “What we are doing is trying to follow out the diplomatic string, but it is running out, quite frankly. And we are prepared to use military force.” And Saddam is “trying to sneak out the back with weapons of mass destruction in hand”
Or was your ‘strategy’ all bluster and threat?
Ms. Albright goes on...

It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The administration's penchant for painting its perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences.

Hmm...

Iranian police and plainclothes agents yesterday charged a peaceful assembly of women’s rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women’s Day, Human Rights Watch said today.

On Sunday, November 13, the semi-official Tehran daily Kayhan reported that the Iranian government publicly hung two men, Mokhtar N. (24 years old) and Ali A. (25 years old), in the Shahid Bahonar Square of the northern town of Gorgan.

The government reportedly executed the two men for the crime of "lavat." Iran’s shari`a-based penal code defines lavat as penetrative and non-penetrative sexual acts between men. Iranian law punishes all penetrative sexual acts between adult men with the death penalty. Non-penetrative sexual acts between men are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are punished with death. Sexual acts between women, which are defined differently, are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are also punished with death.

Mass graves in Iraq are characterized as unmarked sites containing at least six bodies. Some can be identified by mounds of earth piled above the ground or as deep pits that appear to have been filled. Some older graves are more difficult to identify, having been covered by vegetation and debris over time. Sites have been discovered in all regions of the country and contain members of every major religious and ethnic group in Iraq as well as foreign nationals, including Kuwaitis and Saudis. Over 250 sites have been reported, of which approximately 40 have been confirmed to date. Over one million Iraqis are believed to be missing in Iraq as a result of executions, wars and defections, of whom hundreds of thousands are thought to be in mass graves.
Most of the graves discovered to date correspond to one of five major atrocities perpetrated by the regime.
The 1983 attack against Kurdish citizens belonging to the Barzani tribe, 8,000 of whom were rounded up by the regime in northern Iraq and executed in deserts at great distances from their homes.
The 1988 Anfal campaign, during which as many as 182,000 people disappeared. Most of the men were separated from their families and were executed in deserts in the west and southwest of Iraq. The remains of some of their wives and children have also been found in mass graves.
Chemical attacks against Kurdish villages from 1986 to 1988, including the Halabja attack, when the Iraqi Air Force dropped sarin, VX and tabun chemical agents on the civilian population, killing 5,000 people immediately and causing long-term medical problems, related deaths, and birth defects among the progeny of thousands more.
The 1991 massacre of Iraqi Shi’a Muslims after the Shi’a uprising at the end of the Gulf war, in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians in such regions as Basra and Al-Hillah were killed.
The 1991 Kurdish massacre, which targeted civilians and soldiers who fought for autonomy in northern Iraq after the Gulf war.

Odai and Qusay were partial to having prisoners forced to drink gasoline and then shot with incendiary bullets that ignited their bodies. Others were stripped naked, smeared with honey and tossed to starving dogs.
Odai when he was head of the Iraq National Olympic Committee used torture of the country’s athletes as a motivational technique.

Torture victims in Iraq have been blindfolded, stripped of their clothes and suspended from their wrists for long hours. Electric shocks have been used on various parts of their bodies, including the genitals, ears, the tongue and fingers. Victims have described to Amnesty International how they have been beaten with canes, whips, hosepipe or metal rods and how they have been suspended for hours from either a rotating fan in the ceiling or from a horizontal pole often in contorted positions as electric shocks were applied repeatedly on their bodies. Some victims had been forced to watch others, including their own relatives or family members, being tortured in front of them.

Other methods of physical torture described by former victims include the use of Falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet), extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of finger nails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill. Some have been sexually abused and others have had objects, including broken bottles, forced into their anus. In addition to physical torture, detainees have been threatened with rape and subjected to mock execution. They have been placed in cells where they could hear the screams of others being tortured and have been deprived of sleep. Some have stayed in solitary confinement for long periods of time. Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out.

You can put me in the column, Madeleine, of those who want a “globe neatly divided into good and bad”. And I’ll put you in the column of ‘useful idiots’.