Six to nine months after the surge in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, violence is down, or at least we’re told violence is down. How would we know, really? Pentagon press releases? The mainstream media?
Last week’s issue of the New Yorker has a piece on the surge by Jon Lee Anderson, in which he reports that Moqtada al-Sadr’s Madhi Army has been standing down since August.
Anderson writes that al-Sadr, worried about losing control of his fighters, ordered a six-month stand down, while he reconsolidates his power.
The Madhi cease-fire, if it indeed lasts six months, will end in March, about the time the presidential primaries will be settling on two major-party candidates.
The Associated Press reports today that its award-winning Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been held without charges by the U.S. military for 19 months, will finally be brought to trial. In the year and a half Mr. Hussein has been jailed, the Pentagon has changed its story several times, all the while making vague noises about Mr. Hussein being linked to anti-American insurgents.
Whether he is or isn’t is hard to say, since the military has never produced any evidence against Mr. Hussein, a practice which might continue, forcing his defense attorneys to “work in the dark.”
Meanwhile, Blackwater guards continue to roam Baghdad, automatic weapons in hand, despite their well-witnessed killing of 17 civilians in September. A grand jury in Washington has been empanelled to investigate the incident and other involving private security guards in Iraq, but more than 60 days after the shooting, the situation on the ground remains unchanged in essence.
Two cases of justice delayed and denied in the land democracy forgot.
Four hundred and ten years later, the quality of mercy is still not strained. The ability to forgive is still a boon, both to the transgressor and the transgressed. There are, however, other issues. There are questions of justice and how we conduct ourselves as a society.
Twenty-two years ago, a team of French commandos planted two mines against the hull of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in the harbor at Auckland, New Zealand. The Rainbow Warrior was in the Pacific to protest French nuclear tests at Mururoa atoll. The mines detonated late in the evening, sinking the Rainbow Warrior at her berth and killing the crew photographer, Fernando Pereira.
It’s estimated that 13 French agents were involved in the operation; only two were caught and convicted. New Zealand released the convicts early and quashed the other arrest warrants under pressure from the French government.
Although the exposure of state-sponsored terrorist activities by France was a major embarrassment and ruined several careers, the man who led the team of bombers, Louis Pierre Dillais, came away relatively unscathed, due to family connections in the government. His career in the French military’s special services continued for another decade, until he was caught placing wiretaps in the office of one of his superiors.
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Never Forget
Four hundred and ten years later, the quality of mercy is still not strained. The ability to forgive is still a boon, both to the transgressor and the transgressed. There are, however, other issues. There are questions of justice and how we conduct ourselves as a society.
Twenty-two years ago, a team of French commandos planted two mines against the hull of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in the harbor at Auckland, New Zealand. The Rainbow Warrior was in the Pacific to protest French nuclear tests at Mururoa atoll. The mines detonated late in the evening, sinking the Rainbow Warrior at her berth and killing the crew photographer, Fernando Pereira.
It’s estimated that 13 French agents were involved in the operation; only two were caught and convicted. New Zealand released the convicts early and quashed the other arrest warrants under pressure from the French government.
Although the exposure of state-sponsored terrorist activities by France was a major embarrassment and ruined several careers, the man who led the team of bombers, Louis Pierre Dillais, came away relatively unscathed, due to family connections in the government. His career in the French military’s special services continued for another decade, until he was caught placing wiretaps in the office of one of his superiors.
Continue reading »