U.S. in Falluja Turns to Officer Who Defied Saddam

[54anickel]

Musical Generals?

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5021538

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines besieging Falluja brought in a new Iraqi general with a history of standing up to Saddam Hussein on Monday to lead a force they have charged with putting down insurgency in the city.

Their initial choice, who outraged victims of Saddam's regime because of past service in his feared Republican Guard, said he was stepping aside, leaving command of the new Falluja Brigade to former intelligence officer Mohammed Latif.

Latif was said by U.S. military and Iraqi officials to have anti-Saddam credentials.

In Najaf, another flashpoint city, U.S. troops fired on suspected supporters of an anti-American Shi'ite cleric who attacked their base with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

more...

[htuttle]

1. It's clear that American political reality and Iraqi political reality...

...are incompatible at this point in time.

I don't think there is a way to 'construct' an Iraqi government that will satisfy both the US and Iraqi politicial audiences. With Bush, it's a no-brainer which audience he's out to satisfy (the US domestic audience, as always), ergo his Iraq 'plans' are doomed.

[54anickel]

8. Guess there's a question about his "sufficient" credentials after all

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040430/ts_nm/iraq_dc


Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said: "There are people that have done sufficient vetting to feel sufficiently confident that this guy (Saleh) will be sufficiently supportive."

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. I think the Diplodunk term for that faux paus is "oops" we didn't

think that being in the Republican Guard was that bad.

Or they thought the guy was in the GOP...


probably the latter.

[MrPrax]

4. Diplodunk was getting R&R

The 'Ba'athists' streamed out of the country to wait it out until an enslaved Iraqi people were pacified and the US Authority showed dirty playing cards of the 'enemy', and now they are streaming back to take positions of power...

I assumed this was coming when 'Baghdad Bob' was signed to a Fox contract...

Where is Tariq Aziz when you need him...a familiar face for the US public, as they say good-bye to Friends and Fraser...

[pinto]

3. I've seen this headline a couple of times and still wonder:

"Defied" Saddam refers to what?
"Has anti-Saddam credentials" refers to what?
"May have been jailed" refers to what?

Folks are scrambling awful hard....Saleh was an obvious disaster for the admin's "no plan" plan. Hell, he was riding around Fallujah, in uniform, under flag, with supporters 24 hours before Meyer's realized he had been given the post (?).

And now this seems like a quick "stand in for the drunken lead", complete with implied credentials....

Someone call Chalabi for clarification, please. He's probably one of the few who knows what's going on - and that is a sad state of affairs.

[54anickel]

7. Well, they THINK he was arrested once under Saddam

Sounds like grasping at straws to me.

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=1085712

snip>
Like his short-lived predecessor, Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, little is known about Latif. The lack of information has compounded the difficulty in identifying former army officers capable of leading the Fallujah force.

Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top Marine commander in Fallujah, said he believed Latif was exiled by Saddam's government for several years. And Hoshyar Zibari, Iraq's foreign minister, said Saddam even imprisoned Latif at one point.

"He is very well thought of, very well respected by the Iraqi general officers," Conway said of Latif. "You can just see the body language between them."

Latif replaced Saleh as the likely leader of the force after reports emerged linking Saleh to crushing the Kurdish uprising against Saddam's rule after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Latif does "not have such problems," Zibari said

[Name removed]

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[54anickel]

6. Welcome to DU. Hope you enjoy your visit.