Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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A senior Iraqi politician on Wednesday criticised the United States for planning to purge thousands of top Baathists from office, warning the policy would force some to go underground and wage a terrorist fightback.
Allawi said that policy was too sweeping and that there were innocent and guilty at all levels of the once all-powerful Baath machine, and outside it.
''Among the Baathists, whether juniors or seniors, there are some who have committed crimes and looted the wealth of the nation. There are some outside the Baath Party who have committed gross crimes,'' said Allawi.
''Many Baathists were forced to join the party. It would be collective punishment to apply Bremer's de-Baathification decree.''
Allawi himself is a former party member who fled Iraq in 1971 because of differences with Saddam, then still rising towards supreme power
''It is enough to publish information on what the past regime did, on the mass graves and the looting of public wealth. This will finish the Baath Party,'' the well-dressed Allawi told Reuters in an interview at his headquarters, a former Baath Party indoctrination school seized by INA gunmen after the war.
Leave the Ba'athists in and nobody trusts and they will continue to live in fear of a new rise among said Ba'athists. But now we say all the Ba'athists are out and it is going to cause problems. I just wonder, if these are people who are willing to go underground and arm themselves to fight against the attempts to rebuild the nation why should we trust them in a position of power?
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