I don't find Allawi a couragous man. He's a cleaned up version of Saddam. I've added yesterday's article below from the Australian SMH press. If this is the "new Iraq", then he's sounds just like Saddam and the US should distance ourselves (But hey, we picked him. He worked for Mukhabarat, which is on the CIA poll roll, no wonder we picked him.)
It's also pretty interesting that the US and Afganistan agree to delay elections 3 times until it was safe for ALL of Afganistan to vote. But we can't do that in Iraq? We can't wait until Iraq is safe so all of Iraq has a say? So why push elections in Iraq when we didn't in Afgan? So Bush can look good. Of course he is plugging that Iraq is safer (it's not) and that democratic elections will take place so he can make the US feel safer and win US votes. (Real democratic when the entire country can't vote
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Iraq is not safer, it's getting worse. I wish Bush would get that, but it's an election year and he has to win votes. You can't win them by saying Iraq is not doing well/the truth. "Not only do the car bombings and gunfights continue, but the rate of routine crimes perpetrated against Iraqi citizens remains among the very highest in the region. Insurgent attacks on U.S. forces are up 20% since the spring and 100% since last winter; U.S. Central Command's estimate of the number of hardened resistance fighters is also up by a factor of four since early in the year. American fatalities in August were at their fourth-highest monthly total since Saddam fell, and the number of American wounded that month was its highest ever. And despite the relatively successful outcome of the battle against Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Najaf last month, several key Iraqi cities in the Sunni Triangle remain ungovernable and havens for terrorists and insurgents."
http://www.brookings.org/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20040917.htm SMH article:
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government.
Witnesses say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".
Informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.
Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done. Mr al-Naqib's office has issued a verbal denial.
The names of three of the alleged victims have been obtained by the Herald.
One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.
"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."
Re-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four meters in front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired. Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each was shot in the head."
The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them. The witnesses said seven prisoners had been brought out to the courtyard, but the last man in the line was only wounded - in the neck, said one witness; in the chest, said the other.
Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the US experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq.
There is much debate and rumour in Baghdad about the Prime Minister's capacity for brutality, but this is the first time eyewitness accounts have been obtained.
A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannisatraro, recently told The New Yorker: "If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does. He was a paid Mukhabarat [intelligence] agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."
In Baghdad, varying accounts of the shootings are interpreted by observers as useful to a little-known politician who, after 33 years in exile, needs to prove his leadership credentials as a "strongman" in a war-ravaged country that has no experience of democracy.
Dr Allawi's statement dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.
But in a sharp reminder of the Iraqi hunger for security above all else, the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings, with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs."
Before the shootings, the 58-year-old Prime Minister is said to have told the policemen they must have courage in their work and that he would shield them from any repercussions if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty.
The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and surprised". But asked what message they might take from such an act, one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq."
After the removal of the bodies, the officer in charge of the complex, General Raad Abdullah, is said to have called a meeting of the policemen and told them not to talk outside the station about what had happened. "He said it was a security issue," a witness said.
One of the Al-Amariyah witnesses said he watched as Iraqis among the Prime Minister's bodyguards piled the prisoners' bodies into the back of a Nissan utility and drove off. He did not know what became of them. But the other witness said the bodies were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib.
That would place their burial near the notorious prison, which was used by Saddam Hussein's security forces to torture and kill thousands of Iraqis. Subsequently it was revealed as the setting for the still-unfolding prisoner abuse scandal involving US troops in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.
The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said there were five or six civilian-clad American security men in a convoy of five or six late model four-wheel-drive vehicles that was shepherding Dr Allawi's entourage on the day. The US military and Dr Allawi's office refused to respond to questions about the composition of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units.
The security establishment where the killings are said to have happened is on open ground on the border of the Al-Amariyah and Al-Kudra neighbourhoods in Baghdad.
About 90 policemen are stationed at the complex, which processes insurgents and more hardened offenders among those captured in the struggle against a wave of murder, robbery and kidnapping in post-invasion Iraq.
The Interior Ministry denied permission for the Herald to enter the heavily fortified police complex.
The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the Herald. Neither approached the newspaper. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told the other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published.
Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter, with another journalist present for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.
Dr Allawi's office has dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government. In response to a question asking if Dr Allawi carried a gun, the statement said: "[He] does not carry a pistol. He is the Prime Minister of Iraq, not a combatant in need of any weaponry."
Sabah Khadum, a senior adviser to Interior Minister Mr Naqib, whose portfolio covers police matters, also dismissed the accounts. Rejecting them as "ludicrous", Mr Khadum said of Dr Allawi: "He is a doctor and I know him. He was my neighbour in London. He just doesn't have it in him. This is not worth discussing."
Asked if Dr Allawi had visited the Al-Amariyah complex - one of the most important counter-insurgency centres in Baghdad - Mr Khadum said he could not reveal the Prime Minister's movements. But he added: "Dr Allawi has made many visits to police stations ... he is heading the offensive."
US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the allegations. An emailed response to questions from the Herald to the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: "If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed."
H.R.H. Nicole Marie
Eve was Framed
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