No Shame. I heard only today about an outrageous claim that President Bush made two days ago, that Saddam Hussein is responsible for the violence in Iraq today! Huh?
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Saddam has been out of power for nearly three years, and in jail since December 2003, over two years. It is impossible honestly to blame him for anything going on in Iraq today. He's not some Mafia don running the mob from prison thru a network of visitors and fone calls. He has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening today. Nothing. But of course that won't keep the man really responsible, George W. Bush, from accusing him, as Bush accused Saddam of having Weapons of Mass Destruction and harboring Al-Qaeda — false accusations Bush has never retracted nor apologized for.
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Plainly Dubya's puppetmasters are so desperate to find someone other than the United States Government to blame for the Iraq mess that they are putting forth truly pitiful excuses. I would be embarrassed for Bush and his cabal of murderers if I weren't so disgusted with them.
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How, pray, is Saddam supposed to be to blame?

Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day.

"The enemies of a free Iraq are employing the same tactics Saddam used, killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people in an effort to foment sectarian division," Bush said. * * *

"Iraq is a nation that is physically and emotionally scarred by three decades of Saddam's tyranny," Bush said in a speech to Freedom House, a more than 60-year-old independent organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world. * * *

He criticized lawmakers calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq - a move that Bush said would have disastrous consequences for American security. If troops were withdrawn now, Iraq would turn into a safe haven for terrorists, who could arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction and could attack moderate governments in the Middle East.

"The Iraqi government is still in transition, and the Iraqi security forces are still gathering capacity," Bush said. "If we leave Iraq before they're capable of defending their own democracy, the terrorists will win."

What a load of crap. Bush himself can't really expect Americans to buy such a ridiculous pack of lies. Indeed, a poll on iWon.com today shows only 30% believe Saddam is to blame. 20% see the U.S. occupation as being to blame, and 42% see both Saddam and the U.S. equally to blame. That last is a soft middle of people who cannot yet accept that the war they backed has caused such horrendous problems.
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Iraq's physical destruction was done by Saddam? All those bombs and artillery barrages by the United States military, all those years of mass starvation and preventable deaths from disease produced by more than a decade of sanctions had nothing to do with it?
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And what Weapons of Mass Destruction could a ragtag band of terrorists develop that a government could not? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The American people have been fooled once. They will not be fooled twice.
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The tensions between groups in Iraq much predate Saddam Hussein's reign, even birth. Conflict between Shia and Sunni Islam has been going on for centuries, in countries where Saddam played absolutely no role.
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A map of "Kurdistan" appears at http://www.akakurdistan.com/kurds/stories/index.html after the introductory remark, "The map you are about to see was presented at the San Francisco Conference by the Kurdish League Delegation on March 30, 1945." That map shows a large region embracing parts of modern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. A somewhat different map appears at http://kurdistan.org/mapofkurdistan.html, but it too shows an area across those four countries. Yet another map appears at Wikipedia's article on Kurdistan. If you click on that map, you get a larger version that shows that Kurds also occupy a small part of Armenia (which is clearest in yet another enlargement you can get to by clicking on an area outlined in red). The Wikipedia article says, of Kurdish aspirations to nationhood:

Following World War  I and the defeat of Ottoman Empire, Kurds were promised an independent nation-state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. Turkish nationalists, however, rejected the terms of the treaty * * *

[T]he Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), has fought an armed campaign in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran for over thirty years. In Turkey, more than 30,000 Turkish and Kurdish people have died as a result of the war between the state and the PKK, with alleged atrocities being committed by both sides.

World War  I ended in 1918, and Kurdish aspirations to nationhood were vetoed by Turkey in the early 1920s. Saddam Hussein was born in 1937. He had nothing to do with Kurdish struggles against their neighbors, not in Iraq and certainly not in Turkey, which he never controlled.
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As for Shia-Sunni conflict, the BBC addresses intercommunal violence in Pakistan thus:

Shias revere Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed

Pakistan is 20% Shia, 70% Sunni

Violence between Sunni and Shia factions began from early 1980s

Over 150 people have died in the past year alone

Around 4,000 people have been killed in total

Saddam never controlled Pakistan, which is 800 miles from the nearest part of Iraq.
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A South Asian observer presents the wider historical picture:

Shia-Sunni sectarian conflicts have been a feature over most of Muslim history, and they have closely linked to the competition for power. It was this that led Syed Amir Ali (writer on Islamic history and society) to remark in his book, The Spirit of Islam, "Alas! That the religion of humanity and universal brotherhood should not have escaped the internecine strife and discord; that the faith which was to bring peace and rest to the distracted world should itself be torn to pieces by angry passions and the lust of power".

Aside from Iraq and Pakistan, Sunni-Shia violence also occurred in the 20th Century in Lebanon, which Saddam also had nothing to do with. The only reason there isn't a wider area of conflict between the two sects is that Shias are geographically concentrated in the neighborhood of Iran, not scattered widely across the Moslem world like Catholics and Protestants are across the Christian world.
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Shia and Sunni Islam diverged "[s]hortly after the death of the Prophet of Islam". Muhammed died in 632 A.D. To try to blame conflict between Shia and Sunni Islam on Saddam Hussein will not wash.
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As for the claim that if U.S. troops withdrew, "Iraq would turn into a safe haven for terrorists, who could arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction and could attack moderate governments in the Middle East", get serious. U.S. forces do not have to be on the ground to destroy Iraqi WMD installations. We can rain death and destruction from the air. No, ground forces are supposed to be there to build (Iraqi democracy), not destroy (speculative Iraqi WMD). Moslems really are not stupid. They know that spy satellites and U-2 spyplanes they cannot shoot down can watch developments on the ground and direct smart bombs and bunker-busters to destroy any attempt to build an arsenal or army capable of attacking neighboring states. So that assertion won't wash either. These are indeed very dirty lies.
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The claim that "If we leave Iraq before they're capable of defending their own democracy, the terrorists will win" is more drivel. Iraqi democracy is stymied by its own gridlock, not by terrorism. Parliament was elected in December but has met exactly once, on March 16th, for less than an hour!

The parliamentary meeting was reduced to 20 minutes of protocol that did little but meet a constitutional deadline.

"It is just something we have to get off our backs," one senior parliamentarian told Reuters. "Then we'll go and sit at the negotiating table and yell at each other."

Who's to blame? The U.S., plainly. We set up a parliamentary form of government, and it is that form of government that has prevented Iraq from getting democracy underway. If we had set up an American-style government, the Iraqi Congress would have started work immediately on being sworn in, knowing that they have to work together for at least the next two years because their term of office is fixed, so they can't oust their opponents by vote of no-confidence. The President of Iraq would have started to use his executive powers instantly upon taking office.
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What moron came up with the idea of installing a British-style government in a society that has none of the characteristics of a relatively homogeneous society like Britain? Iraq is diverse, much more like the U.S. It should have been given a federal structure with large areas of subject-matter autonomy at the state level and a limited government at the federal level. It worked for us. Why did the Bushies think it would not work for Iraq?
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What the Bush Administration put in place in Iraq is what's causing the political paralysis.
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And the U.S. military occupation is the irritant that drives the insurgency. It is the proverbial bur under the horse's saddle. As long as that bur continues to dig into the horse's flesh, that long will the horse be agitated and unridable. Remove the bur, and the horse will calm down.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,326.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:32 PM