The Spirit of Ice-T, Alive and Well in Iraq



How surreal and out-of-control is the situation in Iraq? I thought things hit some kind of ceiling yesterday when Donald Rumsfeld, in another of his bizarre rants, claimed that Al-Qaeda “media committees” hold regular meetings and somehow manipulate the Western press into publishing depressing stories about Iraq.

But today is another day, and things can always get stranger. At some point Wednesday people dressed in police uniforms raided a security firm on the edge of Baghdad, taking away as many as fifty people to an unknown fate. On the record officials of the Ministry of the Interior (the agency that oversees the police) are saying that there was no police raid authorized on the firm. Off the record some officials are saying the raid was really perpetrated by the police, but reading between the lines it sounds the police were being used to settle a personal grudge. So either way, it’s probably not a good thing.

All that pales compared to the following statement:

"I don't know what happened," [a senior Interior Ministry official] told Reuters. "But what sort of security firm was it anyway when they didn't even defend themselves when people tried to get into the compound, whether they were in police uniform or not? They deserve all they get."

Holy crap! That’s a government official advocating shooting at the police!

Posted: Wed - March 8, 2006 at      

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