War predicted

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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am

Ali, a Friends of Democracy correspondent in Missan province, has his say on anti-election hollerers:

Those who holler in satellite stations and in the media about the future war that will burn Iraq are only actors in a vile, mischievous plot that will never succeed in destroying the Iraqi liberation project. The elections experience is the greatest experience Iraq will go through in its modern history. There is no substitute for it.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul McGeough has been hollering about a future war for nearly two years. Apparently it can be caused by anything: invasion, occupation, Saddam’s removal, US withdrawal, elections …

March 27, 2003:

Such an uprising has the potential to explode into a civil war between the Shiite and Kurdish majority ethnic groups and Saddam’s minority Sunnis, which many analysts fear could erupt before the coalition can impose law and order on Iraq.

April 15, 2003:

As happened in Yugoslavia after the death of the dictator Tito, would the country descend into a nightmare of civil war?

November 19, 2003:

Bush’s plans for a quick getaway ahead of next year’s US presidential election may set the scene for civil war in post-Saddam Iraq.

March 3, 2004:

The organised nature of last night’s attacks heightened fears of Iraq descending into a religious civil war

March 4, 2004:

The sadness, and the real threat that the same schism is being manipulated dangerously close to civil war in Iraq, comes from a hopeless layering of history’s violence and enmity.

March 10, 2004:

The Shiite leadership cast doubt on the document’s viability, immediately diminishing hopes that Iraq’s parallel politics – the Americans and their predominantly exile-run administration on one hand, and the sheer weight of Shiite numbers over Sunnis and Kurds on the other – might be steered away from descent into civil war.

March 13, 2004:

The fraught nature of that contest, which seems to edge steadily towards civil war

March 20, 2004:

The violence that might yet reduce the country to civil war

March 22, 2004:

It might be a civil war that gives birth to the new Iraq – not Bush’s liberation.

April 9, 2004:

The former UN weapons inspection chief Hans Blix told a French publication: “The country is on the verge of civil war today.”

April 10, 2004:

In the March 2 attacks, non-Shiite hands were assumed to be at work – an attempt to turn Iraq’s Shiite majority against the Sunni and Kurdish minorities, trying to provoke the much-feared Iraqi civil war.

May 15, 2004:

The fear now is that the real American success in Iraq has been the creation of the perfect environment for a protracted guerilla war which, at any time, could become a civil war.

June 26, 2004:

The only brake on the very real risk of civil war is the Iraqis’ abiding knowledge of their own brutal history.

June 28, 2004:

Shiite leaders in Baghdad are pressuring the Shiite tribes to give the new interim government an opportunity to resolve the crisis, warning them that to begin a tribal war would start the civil war they believe many Sunnis want.

September 11, 2004:

Iraq is showing all the signs of descent into an ugly civil war.

January 21, 2005:

Many voters will resort to religious and tribal edicts, decrees and urgings on how they should vote, thereby locking in Iraq’s sectarian divide and perhaps setting the scene for the full-blown civil war that some observers now fear is inevitable.

January 29, 2005:

Hanging over Iraq will be the threat of civil war.

UPDATE. It continues …

January 30, 2005:

The leaders of the world are urging 15 million Iraqis to stare down guns and bombs today to vote in a fraught election that promises a democratic future – or a descent into civil war.

Posted by Tim B. on 01/29/2005 at 04:18 AM
    1. I just get this feeling, like there is one single subject that I should be focusing on… but what.

      Maybe it’s that one Guns n Roses song.  I think it’s Night Train.

      Posted by Josh on 01/29 at 04:36 AM • permalink

 

    1. For some reason, I could go for a tall glass of civil war right about now.

      Posted by zefal on 01/29 at 05:05 AM • permalink

 

    1. I dare say McGeough could do with a visit from a psychiatrist…such obvious cheerleading of potential death and destruction can’t be a sign of a healthy mind.

      Posted by PW on 01/29 at 05:09 AM • permalink

 

    1. Its like a little child, “if I wish hard enough…….” Mc Geough [wants] a civil war, it keeps him in a job, he and Marr can write a book together, he can say ‘I told you so’

      Josh, stop it, when I read all of these quotes, I hear Ol Axl’s voice .

      Posted by Nic on 01/29 at 05:20 AM • permalink

 

    1. McGoo, You’ve Done It Again!
      and again and again and again and again ….

      Posted by blogstrop on 01/29 at 05:39 AM • permalink

 

    1. Tim, Paul McGeough is also the one who started the bogus story that Allawi personally shot 6 Iraqi prisoners.

      He also belongs to Media Workers Against War, whose website has vanished.

      This from their website before it went missing.

      “Media Workers Against War are opposed to the so called ‘war on terrorism’ and the mainstream media’s support for aggressive action against innocent civilians under the pretence of ‘anti-terrorism’. “

      My post on him is here:

      http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2004/07/prime-minister-of-iraq-personally.html

      Posted by marc on 01/29 at 08:12 AM • permalink

 

    1. Tim, Paul McGeough is also the one who started the bogus story that Allawi personally shot 6 Iraqi prisoners.

      uh, somehow i get the feeling that tim already knows that

      Posted by benson swears a lot on 01/29 at 09:30 AM • permalink

 

    1. I think McGeough should write a screenplay: “Gone With The Sirocco”–brother against brother, Robert Ali vs USama S Grant, hooped burqhas, the Blew (Up) and the Gray, “I doan know nuthin’ ‘bout bornun’ no democracies, Miz Scarlett!”

      Anyone else have suggestions for Paul’s epic?

      Posted by JDB on 01/29 at 10:15 AM • permalink

 

    1. Talk about a one trick pony. Sheesh!

      Posted by Scott R on 01/29 at 10:40 AM • permalink

 

    1. Well, if it happens, he’ll be able to say “I told you so.”

      And if it doesn’t, his paper won’t print this post on its front page with a picture of him tarred and feathered.

      Posted by William Young on 01/29 at 11:11 AM • permalink

 

    1. JDB, here’s one:

      John Q. Iraq, after casting his ballot, turns on McGeough and his ilk, lifts an eyebrow, and says:  “Frankly, you idiot, I don’t give a damn.”

      Posted by RebeccaH on 01/29 at 11:45 AM • permalink

 

    1. You know, we found a solution to the risk of civil war over here.  We had it and won it.

      I don’t think the holdouts have worked that out yet.

      Posted by richard mcenroe on 01/29 at 02:24 PM • permalink

 

    1. Last April…April the 20th 2004…in an interview with Tony Jones on the ABC’s Lateline program “journalist” Robert Fisk said the following. “The only people who are talking about a civil war at the moment in Iraq are the Americans and the British and the Western journalists who suck up their lines and push it back out as their own analysis.” I guess he was talking about the likes of McGeough. We all know he sucks. He sucks bigtime!

      Posted by Brian on 01/29 at 07:46 PM • permalink

 

    1. Oh by-the-way…GREAT JOB TIM!
      blogstrop…you stole my Magoo-McGoo line 😛

      Posted by Brian on 01/29 at 07:51 PM • permalink

 

    1. Paul McGeough simply panders to the prejudices of the Fairfax readership. A brief perusal of the SMH letters page well illustrates this.

      For example, Les Macdonald, Balmain:

      As usual Paul McGeough brings a sense of reality to an otherwise quite unreal debate about the “elections” in Iraq.

      Note the quotation marks.

      Posted by Adam B on 01/29 at 09:34 PM • permalink

 

    1. It’s like McGeough, through sheer malice, is attempting to will it into reality. No doubt out it, he’s a very nasty C#NT!

      Posted by Brian on 01/29 at 09:45 PM • permalink

 

    1. God I love blogs!  T’aint like the old days Paul. Smart people are paying attention and information is but a couple of clicks away.

      Posted by ap0c on 01/29 at 09:46 PM • permalink

 

  1. Well the BBC has to have some tinge of bad news to report or they would not know what to do.

    Posted by Andrew Ian Dodge on 01/31 at 08:17 AM • permalink