One of the bigger blunders made by this administration during this crisis was to make a rather unimaginative sounding copy of a Clint Eastwood like cowboy as the spokesman for the ruling authority in Baghdad.
While Gen Kimmitt may be a decent man, his repeated pronouncements containing permutations and combinations of the phrases "Killing", "Precise", Overwhelming force", "time and place of our choosing", "destroy", "we will respond", "deliberate" does not seem to be spoken less with the idea of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and more with the intention of telling the American public that there will be divine retribution on the Iraqis.
We need more imaginative people in Baghdad, some very models of a modern major general with information vegetable, animal, and mineral
By doing this, the Governing Council is being de-legitimized and made to look what they really are, impotent lackeys of the CPA. At least at the announcement of Saddam's capture, Adnan Pachachi the then President of the IGC was present.
The ultimate responsibility of a leader is protect his people. If you had an Iraqis appearing as the public face of the anti-insurgency and I am sure there must be enough of them,. including the newly appointed Iraqi Defense and Security ministers, at least case could be made by the IGC, that these anti-insurgency actions have been taken to protect the Iraqi public, and would have given some legitimacy to the IGC in the eyes of the Iraqis. As it is, the CPA is destroying the legitimacy of the very institution that it created.
And it troubling when we hear Kimmitt, Senor, Bremer and others talking about killing or destroying these radical insurgents. I may be naïve but shouldn't the CPA at least pretend that they would follow Iraqi and International Law. What would be the reaction here, if Clinton had said he would will destroy or kill the Oklahoma city bomber?
And now we hear about the mosque with civilians being allegedly blown up by helicopters. We were horrified when Saddam brutally put down the Shia uprising in 1991. "I hope the CPA is not going with the idea of "What was good for Saddam in 1991 is good enough for us in 2004."
This is f@@@@@@ crazy.
There is nothing I want more than to wakeup from this nightmare and tell myself that it was only a bad dream.....