| The Debaathification Authority on Thursday [4 September 2008] expressed its surprise with the arrest of its executive director by Iraqi forces, arguing that such measures should have been implemented through an Iraqi court order. "The media spokesperson for the Multi-National Force (MNF) in Iraq made statements that included serious accusations, including murder and bombings, against Ali Faisal al-Lami, the General Director of the Follow-Up and Implementation Department in our Authority," according to a statement released by the Authority's media department.... "The Authority expresses its surprise with these strange statements and asserts that sound legal procedures adopted in all countries of the world would require that official charges be file through the court in accordance with the law, and not through the media (...) Had it been in the United States, the court would have rejected the charges and released the arrested person because these statements are flagrant interference in the judiciary's affairs (...) The U.S. command in Iraq informed us that Lami will be referred to the Iraqi court, but did not keep its promise (...) Iraqi security authorities do not have any registered charges against Lami, who is not on the wanted list. No complaints or judicial claims have been made against him and no arrest warrant has been issued for him (....) |
Guilty or innocent, M. al-Lámí is far from the first kidnappin’ victim in the former Iraq, and doubtless far from the last as well. His case invites special attention chiefly because he himself must have been licensed by the native PTA ("powers that are") to commit kidnappings on their behalf, involuntary detentions that fans of the native PTA will insist on calling "arrests" rather than "kidnappings." Once again, then, we encounter
that topos of "The Biter Bit" that keeps on bubblin’ to the top of the potscum in the former Iraq.
The native and local scribbler for ’Aswát al-‘Iráq does not understand certain legal details about our own holy Homeland altogether correctly, which is nothing to be surprised about. But he is substantively quite right. If armed operatives of AEI and GOP and DoD ever started behavin’ like that at Crawford TX, their actions would constitute kidnappin’ pure and simple. There is not an iota of doubt about the classification, not even in the perpetratorial mind itself.
Now of course the United States of America has not the great honour and happiness to be an aggression-based democracy, adhering rather to a far less innovative paradigm. From time to time one gets a distinct impression that our Harvard Victory School MBA classes privately wish that an ABD neorégime could be instituted here, on the grounds, sincerely alleged or transparently phony, that that would considerably facilitate the conduct of their Kiddie Krusade, or "Long War," against Global Tourism. Nevertheless they remain at least nine hundred and ninety-nine miles distant from actually establishin’ ABD here im Heimatlande Gottes. We shall therefore confine ourselves to wondering why the GOP geniuses show no interest in disestablishin’ the ABD system in their spear-won provinces overseas.
Do they perchance absolutely require to be able to act like Mr. Al Capone or like their own Col. Ollie North in order to spare their neosubjects chaos and anarcholibertarianism and ‘sectarian’ civil war? The willful coalitionmongers may be far too ready to appeal to Salus populi suprema lex, but unfortunately when they bring SPSL up, decent political grown-ups cannot simply reject the appeal out of hand. [1] Still, they have not actually claimed that salus populi dictates the al-Lámí snatch. They have not, in fact, ventured to justify it at all.
Since the coalitionite vigilantes happen to be tryin’ at the moment to extort a SOFA from the Hannibal of Da‘wa, one is tempted to see some connection between those negotiations and the snatch in question. But it would be a strange connection. M. al-Lámí was not obviously in a position to frustrate, or even interfere with, the whims of Rancho Crawford. And to kidnap him strengthens poor M. al-Málikí's SOFA position rather than the cowpokers’, does it not? If we just make stuff up after the fashion of the Goofville gentry, we might ‘discover’ that Hannibal Redux did the kidnapping on his own, but has subtly managed to make it look as if AEI and GOP and DoD were responsible for his own secret crime d’état. That plan really would bolster his end of the SOFA, and generally it makes a lot of sense. But as always, almost, to dabble in the intellectual filth of conspiratorializing overrates the intelligence of the bad guys. If Núrí Kamál is that clever and that unscrupulous, why, I am undoubtedly Marie of Roumania!
"The Authority expresses its surprise with these strange statements." And so do I.
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[1] This is an unfortunate circumstance because the SPSL maxim works best when it is talked about least. To behave as AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP have behaved and invoke Popsafe to trump Rulalaw half a dozen times weekly is like hollerin’ ‘Wolf’ all the time to amuse themselves and get reëlected: if they ever do really need SPSL, they will probably find that they have made sure it will not be available, or at least not quickstart for them.
Popsafe does not stand alone. The cowpokers are in much the same case as regards inflictin’ torture on (supposed) enemies of Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology. In the customary Dershowitzian case where ‘we’ ‘know’ that ’Abú ’Irháb knows where the nuke is located that will blow Château Kennebunkport to smithereens in half an hour and kill approximately 43,207 children under the age of sixteen, of course we would torture him. Absurd to pretend that anybody human would not! But nothin’ rots the mind of the invasionite faster than to base torture policy on so utterly ridiculous and counterfactual a basis as satisfies Mr. Dershowitz of Harvard.
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