Iraqi official granted immunity

[hussar]

Former Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed has been given effective immunity from prosecution following his surrender to US forces.

Mr Ahmed - number 27 on the Americans' list of most wanted former Iraqi officials - gave himself up in the northern city of Mosul on Friday.

White House officials said they have high hopes he will provide significant information on Iraq's alleged weapons programmes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3137732.stm

[FlemingsGhost]

1. The "War on Terrorism" has officially been lost!

According to the administration's own standards:

"Anyone that harbors or conducts business with terrorist, is a terrorist."

[eridani]

2. Obviously there are good terrorists and bad terrorists

That is to say, obedient ones and disobedient ones.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4243

- A culture of secrecy has descended upon the Anglo- American occupation authorities in Iraq.

They will give no tally of the Iraqi civilian lives lost each day.
They will not comment on the killing by an American soldier of one of their own Iraqi interpreters on Thursday he was shot dead in front of the Italian diplomat who was official adviser to the new Iraqi ministry of culture and they cannot explain how General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, the former Iraqi minister of defence and a potential war criminal, should now be described by one of the most senior US officers in Iraq as "a man of honour and integrity."

It was Ahmed who persuaded now retired General Norman Schwarzkopf to allow the defeated Iraqi forces to use military helicopters on "official business" after the 1991 US-Iraqi ceasefire agreed at Safwan.

His quite extraordinary letter to Ahmed which preceded the Iraqi general's surrender and was revealed by the Associated Press news agency described the potential war criminal as "the most respected senior military leader currently residing in Mosul" and promised that he would be treated with "the utmost dignity and respect."

What is presumably supposed to be seen as a gesture of compromise is much more likely to be understood as a sign of military weakness which it clearly is and history will have to decide what would have happened if similar letters had been sent to Nazi military leaders before the German surrender in 1945.

Historians will also have to ruminate upon the implications of the meaning of "supporting our leaders in a common and just cause." Are Saddam and Mr Bush supposed to be these 'leaders'?

[saigon68]

4. Honest--- the testicle crushers I used can be adapted

To use on the next set of bad guys

[emad]

3. Are they merely paving the way to offer a similar deal to

Bush/Cheney/Bowel/Rummy/Rice et al?