More good news in Iraq, as the de-Ba’athification continues in earnest:
American forces have captured Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein’s presidential secretary and No. 4 on the U.S. most-wanted list of Iraqi leaders, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
U.S. forces captured Mahmud on Monday in Iraq, a statement from U.S. Central Command said. It did not say where in Iraq he was captured.
Third in power only to the former Iraqi president and his younger son, Qusai, Mahmud controlled access to Saddam and was one of the few people he is said to have trusted completely, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
For those keeping track, he was the Ace of Diamonds.
Nick
Stop it, John. Things are going badly over there and you know it. Stop pointing out real and significant victories for the US. That only makes it more difficult to blindly carp about Bush and Rumsfeld.
the talking dog
Now, now, Nick. No one doubts that picking up the entire deck will ultimately be a boon to the United States. Its just that we’ve picked up well under half the deck, despite having overrun the country very quickly (and we still haven’t picked up Saddam himself, though if we do, that would be huge.)
Of course, capturing Saddam is infinitely less important than bin Laden, but there you go.
Once again– no one (even us ‘ponents of that thar’ war) have a problem admitting that the Iraqi people are better off with their tyranny removed. But we always go to the next logical step.
The Iranian and Saudi and Libyan people, just to name three OPEC member tyrannies, would be better off free of their dictators. Are we going to be freeing them, soon, too?
We had a rationale for entering this war– Saddam had (and was hiding from inspectors!) weapons that were an IMMINENT THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES, nay, the stability of the world. Key word: imminent. The unparallelled lack of evidence means that unless the Bush Administration constitutes the grossest incompetents in history (and I don’t think they do) they were, to put it politely, ignoring nuances, or to put it accurately, lying through their teeth.
And no, a good result for the wrong reason, when it will have adverse consequences in terms of credibility for gathering support for future operations (such as against someone who might LEGITIMATELY present a real threat) is NOT something to be lauded.
The Bush Administration has been as free spending with our nation’s political capital as it has been with its taxpayers’ money. And that’s not good.
Dr. Weevil
The Talking Dog needs to think more before opening his muzzle: 31 of the Iraqis on the deck of cards have been captured, and that’s not “well under half” but well OVER half of 52 (59.6%). There’s a complete list on my web site. (Click on the Ba’ath Poker button. There are 32 names listed there because we have 32 of the list of 55 in custody, but #53 wasn’t important enough to have a card.)
The rest of his argument is just as dubious, though less provably so:
1. Capturing Saddam is infinitely MORE important than capturing Osama because the latter is quite obviously dead, and has been for some time.
2. We had several rationales for entering the war, and WMDs were just one of them. We haven’t found Scott Speicher either, and we know he must be somewhere in Iraq (not necessarily alive) and are certainly looking for him. We also didn’t find the 40 tons of gold until it was put in a dumptruck heading for the border. Iraq’s a big place, and if you can hide that much gold you can certainly hide quite a lot of WMDs.
3. I can’t find the reference now, but some blogger has cogently argued that Bush specifically did NOT call Iraqi WMDs an “imminent threat” because once a threat is imminent it’s generally too late to do much about it. If you want to say he said “imminent” you need to prove it.
4. As for Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, since when is doing a good thing bad if one does not immediately go on and do all possible similar good things? Not to mention that the liberation of Iraq seems to have provided a big push towards the self-liberation of Iran: two for the price of one.
5. Our credibility will inevitably be damaged going into the next necessary military operation because American leftists will make a point of damaging it with whatever misrepresentations they can think of.