Summary
"Most of Baghdad's street lamps went on last week for the first time in years. It was a small improvement in the quality of life, but in the twinkling light the Iraqi capital looked a little less menacing and a lot more familiar. Ahmed Chalabi, the former darling of American neoconservatives who lobbied hard for the overthrow of [Saddam Hussein] and later became deputy prime minister, toured the city with quiet satisfaction. ... Earlier this month Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, put Chalabi in charge of restoring essential services to the capital."
"The first stop on (Chalabi's) itinerary this day is the compound of Sheik Nadeem Hatim Sultan, leader of the Tamimi tribe in the Taji region north of the capital. Until two months ago, the area was a hot spot for ethnic violence and an outpost for the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq. U.S.-led troops routed insurgents under the new security push, and tribal sheiks fought to regain control of their community. Sectarian fires have cooled now and residents are eager to rebuild the area's economy, fuelled by lush farmland and about 15 textile factories, and to restore its public services. Chalabi is received like royalty."The Maliki government is not using undue haste or sectarian demagogy in the case of Sultan Hashim Ahmed al-Tai, Saddam Hussein's former defence minister, sentenced to death but not yet executed. Many Sunni Kurds and Arabs, either opposed to the death penalty on principle or opposed in this case, seem for now to have prevailed. And "the cabinet," according to the Nov. 18 New York Times, "has sent legislation to the Parliament softening the de-Baathification law that had presented obstacles to former Baathists' working in government jobs." I wonder how many people, reading that ordinary sentence about "the cabinet" and "the Parliament," as reported also in independent Iraqi media, have any idea what it means when compared with the insane proceedings of the totalitarian abattoir state that was Iraq until 2003.See the full content of this document
Extract
Good News From Iraq
Christopher Hitchens
A few weeks ago, in Britain's Prospect magazine, foreign editor Bartle Bull published a bold essay saying that the high tide of violence in Iraq was essentially behind us and that the ebb had disclosed some interesting things.First, the Iraqi people as a whole had looked into the abyss of civil...See the full content of this document
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