From
Change For America
Paul Bremer announced yesterday the appointment of a new National Security Advisor for the Iraqi Governing Council that is currently falling apart.
Following consultation with the Iraqi Governing Council, Ambassador Bremer named Mr. Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaiday as the new Minister of Interior and Dr. Mowaffak Al Rubaie as the new National Security Advisor.
In case you were wondering what the job of the National Security Advisor in Iraq entails, it seems as though it differs from the role our has.
... In the role of National Security Advisor, Dr. Rubaie is the primary advisor to the head of government and the Ministerial Committee for National Security on national security matters, and manages and supervises the National Security Advisory Staff. Dr. Rubaie is tasked with providing balanced, impartial advice to the head of government and the MCNS, along with facilitating coordination among the ministries and agencies charged with national security-related responsibilities[emphasis and sarcasm mine].
Wow. Wish Condi was supposed to do that. Then we might not have gotten in this mess.
What qualifying skills does this Doctor have for the post of NSA? Well, his
resume is definitely different from Condi's.
"Soft-spoken, bearded, bespectacled and courtly, al-Rubaie, 55, was the international spokesman for one of the most feared terrorist organizations in the Middle East during the 1980s, the Iraqi Dawa Party. But he's also a prosperous British-educated physician. He practiced medicine in London for the better part of three decades. (His British patients, for the most part, knew him by his Anglicized name, Mow Baker.) While pious, he is also perfectly comfortable in secular Western society. "Shall we dine and not wine?" he used to joke with guests when inviting them to dinner at his house. And while Western policies toward Iraq went through many changes, al-Rubaie's goal was always consistent: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."
What a charming fellow. Wine and dine rhyme. Sounds like a true man of the people.
What of this terrorist organization he was a part of?
Of all the political parties rushing to fill the space left by the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, few have the track record or name recognition of the Hezb-i-Dawa Islamiyeh, or Islamic Dawa Party.
With its radical Shiite platform and history of entanglement with anti-American causes, the Dawa party is one of Iraq's oldest opposition parties and, until it was crushed by Saddam's regime, it also was the most effective.
Inspired in part by the revolution under way in Iran, Dawa mounted one of the few organized armed challenges to the Baath Party regime, killing numerous party officials and mounting several attempts on Saddam's life in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
...With its history of armed struggle and radical platform, Dawa could become a rallying point for opposition to the United States, said Nizar Hamzeh, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.
"If they are left out of the process, they could definitely be a main factor behind any future resistance against American forces in Iraq," Hamzeh said.
For now, however, that is not Dawa's intention.
Oh goody.