Regime Unchanged. posted by Richard Seymour

Schadenfreude: Part One

I today begin a new series dedicated to rubbing salt in the Prime Minister's wounds, specifically pertaining to his bleat that "a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with Schadenfreude at the difficulty we find". From the mouth of an idiot comes wisdom.

In that same article, the Prime Minister described the Iraqi resistance as, among other things, " remnants of a brutal dictatorship which murdered hundreds of thousands of its own people and enslaved the rest". That sounds terrifying. Who would associate themselves with such bloodied foes?

Answer - the United States and Great Britain:

"The United States is moving to rehire former members of Iraq's ruling Baath Party and senior Iraqi military officers fired after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, in an effort to undo the damage of its two most controversial policies in Iraq, according to U.S. officials ... The U.S.-led coalition is already bringing back senior military officers to provide leadership to the fragile new Iraqi army, with more than half a dozen generals from Hussein's military appointed to top jobs in the past week alone, U.S. officials said. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of Central Command, is working to identify other commanders to bring back, officials added."

Meanwhile, back in our haven of democracy, we learn that all that bullshit we promised to the Iraqis was just PR :

"The new Iraqi interim government scheduled to take control on July 1 will have only "limited sovereignty" over the country and no authority over U.S. and coalition military forces already there, senior State and Defense officials told Congress this week ... "So we transfer sovereignty, but the military decisions continue to reside indefinitely in the control of the American commander. Is that correct?" Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, on Tuesday. "That's correct," Myers replied."

General Myers has all the persuasive skill of the recently lachrymose Ron Atkinson. He has insisted that Fallujah was a "humane" campaign:

"There has never been a more humane campaign... and that goes for operations in Falluja".

Well, General, if its okay for you to shoot at unarmed boys , and kill enough people to fill a football field, (see photo), would you care to explain the simple humanity of those bombers who took comparatively fewer lives in Madrid?



And here is the greatest Schadenfreude shot of them all - it's not working. Everything they are doing is making the Iraqis even more pissed off, even more inclined to send bullets of gratitude the way of their ersatz liberators. Or, as one Iraqi told the BBC:

"When the Americans arrived there were only about 50 guerrillas - by the end of the week there were a few thousand." Nada Rabee, Falluja resident.