Reply #7: Only now . . .

[gratuitous]

As we get deeper into the muck, only now do quite a few Americans see what Saddam was doing as the dictator of Iraq. Ruthless? Cruel? You betcha. All that and more. And if he, a member of the country's Shiite minority was going to run the country, it was a way to go. The Sunni majority didn't like it, but thanks to that ruthlessness and cruelty, they knew that they didn't stand a chance of organizing. Too many cooks spoil the broth, goes the old saying, and taking too many people into your confidence when plotting to overthrow the dictator increases your risk of discovery exponentially. It could be a traitor or a mole; it could be a proud participant bragging about how there was a plot to take Saddam out; it could be someone's injudicious remark at the wrong time or in the wrong place; or any combination of the three, that does in your conspiracy.

But Bush decapitated Iraq with the invasion. Suddenly, all the pent up Sunni frustration and rage was popped open like an agitated champagne bottle. And anyone who has opened a bottle of champagne too fast knows what happens: You get a big, uncontrollable mess. Decades of suppression were lifted in a moment, with U.S. troops blundering through the country looking for the dictator. As soon as their backs were turned, the wholly predictable and inevitable time of payback began. And the Sunnis, a majority in Iraq (but a minority in other Muslim countries), didn't wait very long to start exacting their retribution.

Consider, even now on an allegedly sane place like Democratic Underground, how quickly an inocuous comment about ignorant rednecks in the South or mindless violence proceeding from the point of a gun draws the most hateful, vitriolic posts back and forth. Now consider these same arguments in real time, face-to-face, between people with some real grievances against each other, fueled by anger blessed as righteous by the social and religious leaders, and it's not too difficult to understand the murderous inevitability of the ensuing events.

And now Bush and his war cheerleaders want to pretend that all this revenge and payback and centuries of score-settling is really up to the people involved, and how they had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Why, who knew that Sunnis and Shiites didn't like each other very much?

Disingenuous? Yep. Cynical? Comes as naturally as breathing for these bastards. And lethally inept? Trifecta!