The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

This Week's Tips for Democracy Enhancement

The caliphate in Washington is pressing the sovereign, independent government of Iraq to sack its interior minister. The minister, Bayan Jabr, is a Shia, and his staff have apparently been torturing Sunni prisoners.

"With a strong Sunni role in Iraq's next government apparently secure after their high turnout in Thursday's election," says the Guardian, "US officials want to ensure that cabinet posts are no longer exploited for sectarian or partisan ends." What US officials want, the independent, sovereign government of Iraq will just have to deliver. American officers are being "embedded" with interior ministry forces, commandos and police when they go about their business of rooting out terrorism. American officers are also making surprise inspections of prisons and detention centres, presumably to ensure that none bears too strong a resemblance to Guatánamo Bay.

The minister pleads that only seven people have been tortured, out of a hundred and seventy suspected terrorists; but the US ambassador says that more than a hundred people were subjected to "far worse than slapping around". Slapping around is fine with Washington, it seems.

For the benefit of the independent, sovereign Iraqi government, the ambassador has made it clear in the Washington Post that he wishes the minister dismissed or given a different job: "It will be important that the head of security at ministries be trusted by all communities and not come from elements of the population that have militias," such as Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Muslims, nationalists, Iraqis and so forth. "Equally important is that key ministers be selected not just for political considerations but also for competence," as in the world's greatest democracy, where loyalty to the ruling cabal is never, absolutely never, a precondition for high office.

"The next government must put more emphasis on human rights," the ambassador concluded, two days after the world's greatest democracy strapped a man to a trolley, paralysed him with an injection, and then stopped his heart with another.

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