The Iraq We’ll Leave Behind

Froomkin also reminded me about this depressing tidbit out of Iraq: “Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country’s first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam’s regime.

“‘People are doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse,’ Ayad Allawi told The Observer. ‘It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.’ ”

I shudder to imagine the sort of country that the US seems likely to leave behind as US troops are gradually withdrawn over the next year or two. The fact that none of this is at all surprising – many people were predicting that this is exactly what would happen before Bush even launched the US invasion of Iraq – is of little comfort.

Kash