Lynching Saddam – Part 2: Juan Cole’s informed comment

Lynching Saddam – Part 2: Juan Cole’s informed comment

Following the murder of one of the main lawyers defending prisoner of war President Saddam Hussein in that lynching circus the US’ government exported to Iraq (even Kafka would have not dared calling that thing a “trial”), one of the most interesting comments comes from Juan Cole.

The favourite of much part of the western anti-war movement spent as many as 111 words to comment:

Another of Saddam's defense attorneys was assassinated. That tribunal, which at one time seemed as though it would be source of good news for the Bush administration, has been handled so badly that it has become nothing short of an embarrassment. Three defense lawyers killed, and one witness alleging that some of the men Saddam is alleged to have had killed at Dujail are still alive. Saddam even emerged after the February bombing of the golden dome at Samarra and the subsequent faith-based massacres between Shiite and Sunni as a voice of national unity. To give the old mass murderer the occasion to grandstand that way. It is incompetence, criminal incompetence. (1)

The former (?) head of state overthrown by a foreign, military, illegal and immoral invasion that’s destroyed the whole state of Iraq and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people, is called by Cole’s informed comment “Saddam” for three times and finally “the old mass murderer”. Cole's Conclusion: “It is incompetence, criminal incompetence”.

This is the same Juan Cole who wrote last November, about the US’ use of White Phosphorous in Fallujah: “This is a public relations issue, not an issue of war crimes”. (2)

Maybe Juan Cole should listen to the US National Public Radio more often. American historian and journalist William Blum wrote a few days ago:

National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now." (3)

Besides Cole’s agenda, his followers in the West and the anti-war movement in its whole should remember the words William Blum writes at the end of his report: “And many Iraqis actually supported him [Saddam Hussein]”.

Legitimate, respectable different opinions and point of views can and should go together with intellectual honesty and historical truth. That’s the only possible way to build opposition to this vicious and rapacious empire. All the rest is propaganda’s smokescreen we all should be very careful of.


NOTES:

1) Juan Cole, June 22, 2006, Informed Comment

2) Open letter to Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan By Gabriele Zamparini

3) The Anti-Empire Report. Some things you need to know before the world ends, William Blum, June 21, 2006

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Read also:

- - Lynching Saddam

- Lynching Saddam – Part 2: Juan Cole’s informed comment

- Lynching Saddam – Part 3: Stop that "trial" now!

- Lynching Saddam – Part 4: the NYT enjoys that bloody show!

- Lynchng Saddam – Part 5: United Nations and Saddam’s Lawyers’ call

- Lynching Saddam – Part 6: The More You Watch the Less You Know