| 19 January 2005 | Wednesday | 08 Zilhaj 1425 |
Blowing hot & cold on Balochistan
Seeking a loyal servant
The re-coronation of King George
In the first fortnight of 2005, according to a compilation of the New York Times a total of 202 people died in Iraq. Most of the casualties were in the "deadly Sunni Triangle" but the insurgent attacks were not confined to this area alone.
For the most part, the victims were Iraqi security forces and the methods used varied from car bombs to ambushes by insurgents wearing uniforms of the security forces or police.
Over the weekend, another 17 people died while Monday proved to be even more devastating with at least 16 people dying in two insurgent attacks. The Iraqi interim government also announced that Iraqi forces had killed some 35 suspected insurgents in two days of operations in the vicinity of the devastated city of Fallujah.
The death toll was heavy, probably heavier than it has been at anytime since the insurgency gained momentum in late 2003. All indications are that it has become more widespread with areas in the Kurdish north and the Shia south also being subject to attacks.
School buildings that were to be used as polling stations in Basra, traditionally recognized as a Shia stronghold, were bombed as were other such sites all over Iraq.
The prospects appear to be that the insurgency and the attacks on all election sites and election officials will intensify further in the two weeks that remain before the elections on January 30.
While the Iraqi interim government has now conceded that elections will not be possible in certain parts of Iraq, and that even voter registration will not be possible in the provinces of Anbar (where Fallujah is located) and Nineveh (where Mosul is located) they are insistent that this will not call the legitimacy of the elections into question.
What is not yet clear is how many will be able to vote in the four provinces (Baghdad, Anbar, Nineveh and Salahaddin) that are admittedly disturbed and which encompass one third of Iraq's total area and over half its population.
The Americans are still trying to suggest that there has been no extraordinary surge in violence. The American Commander General Casey maintained that the level of insurgent attacks is only marginally higher than it was some nine months ago when alongside the launching of their first attack on Fallujah, they were also contending with the Moqtada Sadr-led Shia insurgency in the south.
This may well be statistically true but it is hardly relevant. The current wave of attacks has affected the morale of the candidates and of the election workers. The extent to which this impacts on the registration of voters and the actual turnout on election day will determine the success or failure of the insurgency effort.
The insurgents are clearly well informed about the vulnerabilities of the sites that they have targeted and this information flows from the infiltrators that they have in the Iraqi security forces and among the locals employed on American bases.
According to an estimate by an aide of Prime Minister Allawi, as many as five per cent of the members of the Iraqi armed forces and police are either insurgents or sympathizers.
American experts have estimated that in the Sunni triangle as many as 20 per cent of those inducted in the security forces or given employment on US bases are hardcore insurgents with the percentage dwindling to about one per cent in the Shia-dominated areas in the south.
They are also of the opinion that the number of "sympathizers" - defined as those who would not participate in insurgent operations but would provide information - would constitute a far higher percentage.
Odious though this comparison will be to the Americans, who, theoretically, are only wanting to bring democracy to Iraq, these figures are eerily reminiscent of the sort of strength the underground resistance that had plagued the German occupation forces in Europe during the Second World War.
In France, for instance, the Vichy government was riddled with Maquis activists and sympathizers who regarded Nazi collaborators and the occupation forces as legitimate targets for their insurgent activities.
If the Iraqi insurgency has been able to gather this measure of support, it is perhaps reflective in part of the degree to which the current interim government, largely a government of exiles, is viewed by the Iraqis in the same light as the Vichy government in occupied France and of the degree to which there is a distrust among Iraqis of the intentions of the American occupation forces.
Whether the support for the insurgents is based on this or on Sunni fears of marginalization or on a combination of the two it is clear that it is a formidable force and has been able to call into question the legitimacy of the planned elections.
This is apparent from the measures that have been forced upon the electoral process by the insurgency generated security situation. The details of this process have now been made public and some of its salient features are detailed below.
Voters on January 30 will get at least two ballots, one for the national assembly and one for a governate legislature, equivalent to a state legislature. The national ballot will have a line with the name, number and symbol, if there is one, for each of 111 slates of candidates.
But the names of the individual candidates that make up each slate will not be on the ballot. Clearly, this omission is attributable in part to the need to keep the ballot papers reasonable in size, but the fact is that most candidates do not want their names to be publicized because of security fears.
The Iraqi election commission in Baghdad plans to release before the elections the lists for each slate, a total of 7,000 candidates, but how that will be done has not been decided.
In effect, therefore, the only names of candidates that will be publicized are those who have been provided security by the government or those that can afford to hire their own security guards. This, of course, gives the edge to the Iraqis who have returned from exile and are receiving funding from abroad or are being backed by the Americans.
It also gives the edge to the only party that has received a public endorsement from Ayatollah Sistani, the United Iraqi Alliance since for many Iraqi Shias the absence of a detailed list of candidates will make it easier to regard it as their religious duty to vote for the party endorsed by the highest-ranking Shia cleric in Iraq.
The United Nations spokesman maintains that they have done extraordinarily well in getting the electoral roles prepared in what was comparatively a very short time.
They have said that they would have the lists distributed to the regional centres and applications for changes would be entertained from January 20 to 25, only some five days behind the original schedule. They have also said that the location of the almost 6,000 polling stations are being decided upon and will be announced shortly.
The fact, of course, is that the registration lists were relatively easy to prepare in Iraq because almost the entire population in the north was already registered with the UN for food ration purposes, and more than 60 per cent of the population in the rest of the country had similar ration cards to benefit from the UN food distribution programme.
Where the UN has failed in registration is the areas in which the insurgency is strong. These include significant portions of the most densely populated four provinces of Iraq.
The Iraqi election commission has said that no voter registration has been possible in Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, and that voting and registration will take place simultaneously there.
Similarly, in Anbar province no registration has taken place but some voting centres may be set up in Baghdad to permit refugees from Fallujah to vote. For election day, itself strict security precautions have been announced.
These include the declaration of three days holiday, the prohibition of the movement of vehicles in the vicinity of the polling stations and a general restriction on vehicular traffic during the holiday period.
There would also be three rings of security around the polling stations for which some 100,000 Iraqi police and security forces are to be deployed. There is also a plan for a rapid reaction force that could move into any area where there is an insurgency attack.
The plan appears good on paper but difficult to implement in practice given the fact that the Iraqi security forces are limited, are ill-trained and as mentioned earlier, infiltrated by insurgents or their sympathizers.
The security concerns of the candidates have obviously not been assuaged by these measures. A delegation of American congresswomen visiting Iraq to make a first-hand assessment met 20 Iraqi women candidates and were told that each one of them wanted to avoid publicity because of the fear of insurgent reprisals.
One woman's son had been killed; another had been kidnapped while a third had resigned from the slate of candidates after her family had been threatened. One congresswoman while suggesting that the holding of elections was the "lesser evil", described the election process as "surreal" and opined, "it is stunning in this situation that we are representing any idea this is legitimate."
In Washington, however, there is much optimism. Asked about why nobody had been held accountable for the many failures in Iraq, President Bush blithely replied, "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election. And the American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I'm grateful."
In other words his re-election was a blanket endorsement of all that he had done in Iraq. This, of course, ignored the fact that recent opinion polls show a majority of Americans being opposed to America's Iraq policy and to what was going on there.
With some degree of caution, however, Bush refused to endorse the view expressed by outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell that the United States would be able to pull back a substantial number of its troops from Iraq by the end of the year, preferring, instead, to maintain that this would happen as quickly as possible - the latter being determined by the speed with which Iraqis could be trained to take over security duties in their country.
The elections will go forward. They would have been a farce or "surreal" in the best of circumstances but given the likelihood that the insurgency will gain momentum in the coming days, they will literally be a "bloody farce" enjoying legitimacy only in the eyes of the occupation forces and setting in all likelihood the worst possible example of how democracy is to come to the Middle East or to the Islamic world.
Many more Iraqis may be found after these elections yearning for the relative security that the tyrannical regime of Saddam provided. A sad but perhaps logical denouement to a sordid misadventure by the world's only superpower.]]
Blowing hot & cold on Balochistan
The crisis in Balochistan has reached a boiling point. The turmoil in Pakistan's largest province that had generally been ignored by the rest of the country has now shot into public awareness.
Although events in Balochistan were being reported in the press regularly, they have been taken note of only now by people generally when the gas purification plant at Sui was hit by rockets last week. Triggered off by the rape of a lady doctor at the Sui field hospital, the latest spate of violence has deepened the crisis.
The present attacks have affected the gas supply to the country and the gas companies have had to institute a regime of what is euphemistically called load management. How the government plans to handle the situation is not very clear.
It has reacted by blowing hot and cold on the issue. The knee-jerk response of President Pervez Musharraf was to threaten stern action against the "so-called nationalists and sub-nationalist elements". He told a private television channel, "Don't push us. This is not the seventies. [This time] they will not even know what has hit them."
Then followed the political instinct of the government that was expressed in a statement by the federal information minister denying that any military action was planned in Balochistan.
The economic approach came in the prime minister's speech at the ground-breaking ceremony of the Sabakzai dam when he declared that the "future of Pakistan was linked with the development of Balochistan" and the government wanted to change the economic conditions of the people of the province and enhance their living standard.
True, the government cannot change the 50 years' history of the province, as prime minister Shaukat Aziz pointed out last Saturday. But the government can certainly learn from it.
Balochistan has experienced three army actions in the post-partition years. Democracy was late in coming - the first provincial assembly was elected in 1970 only to be interrupted by military coups in Islamabad. Economic development has been slow.
The fact is that all the three elements, namely army intervention, economic backwardness and political under-development are very closely intermeshed at the root of Balochistan's insurgency.
The failure to evolve strong democratic traditions and political structures (partly due to the army's intervention among other factors) helped perpetuate the sardari system and consolidated the hold of the tribal leaders.
The sardars on their part have used the underdevelopment of the province to pose as the champions of the underdog. They have played on the poverty of the people to mobilize their followers in their power struggle against Islamabad.
As for the federal government, all these factors have helped the powers-that-be in Islamabad - whether civilian or military - to strengthen their control over Balochistan and exploit its riches to their own advantage. Who has been the loser? The common man of Balochistan, of course.
The problem is that the government which now claims to be trying to address the issues that are agitating the Baloch mind has failed to see the link between them.
When it speaks of economic development it forgets that political autonomy and social development as well as participatory governance should also be developed simultaneously. Take the case of the mega projects, which are supposed to bring the fruits of development to the Baloch. They have instead become a major cause of contention.
The Baloch, as well as their leaders, are convinced that the seaport at Gwadar, the coastal highway, the airport at Pasni, the Mirani dam and the naval base at Ormara have been designed as a composite project which will not benefit the locals.
They fear greater sufferings. For instance, the displacement which the seaport at Gwadar is expected to cause will move the fishermen of this locality more than 10-15 kilometres inland affecting their livelihood.
Even the employment that had been promised has not come by - just a few scores of jobs have been created for Baloch workers. No training facilities have been set up to train indigenous workers for future recruitment. With the developers in Karachi and Punjab having entered Gwadar's real estate business in a big way, the locals do not stand to gain much.
What has brought deeper concern is the influx of people from other provinces. The Baloch fear that their province will be swamped by these 'foreigners' and they will be reduced to a minority as has happened in other places.
Hence the staunch resistance. The example of Karachi is cited again and again where the locals have been outnumbered by the people who came from outside looking for jobs and refuge.
Allegation has also been made that the sardars are fuelling the agitation because they do not want their people to reap the benefits of development and thus get empowered. Development would undermine the sardari system, but the leaders deny this.
There is not much to argue on this score. Islamabad has itself created the conditions that have generated lack of confidence among the people and strengthened the hands of the sardars.
The record of exploitation of the Baloch has been horrendous. Gas was first discovered at Sui in 1952 but it was only in the eighties when General Ziaul Haq decided to make Quetta a corps commander headquarters that the city was connected with the gas fields.
At this time the rest of Pakistan had already been enjoying the comforts of gas as a fuel for two decades. Even today, only six per cent of the population of Balochistan has been provided gas.
As for the price paid to the province for the gas extracted from Sui, Balochistan feels severely discriminated against. Its sense of injustice is substantiated by the figures available.
Punjab, Sindh and NWFP receive royalty on gas and oil at a higher rate than Balochistan - Rs 140 per million BTU for Sindh, Rs 80-190 for Punjab and Rs 36 for Balochistan.
Besides the development surcharge calculated on the formula worked out by the NFC for the federal divisible pool is on the basis of population and that goes against Balochistan with only six million people.
It is estimated that in 2004-05, Balochistan which provides the bulk of gas supply to the country will receive Rs5.9 billion for gas royalty and development surcharge when Sindh will receive Rs19 billion.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz probably feels that he can win the hearts and minds of the people of Balochistan by pumping in a lot of funds into the province to make a visible difference. This strategy could backfire at this stage.
It would be on the presumption that the sardars have no clout or following. Had the social and economic development of the people of Balochistan been a continuous process, it could have produced a change in its mindset. But that has not been the case. With less than a quarter of the people of the province being literate and most being impoverished, they can hardly be expected to throw off the tribal yoke and ditch the sardars.
Besides, at present the Baloch have no other leaders who can speak on their behalf and sell a compromise solution to them. Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, Sardar Ataullah Mengal, Nawab Akbar Bugti and others speak for their people and while they remain entrenched in their position they will continue to do so.
Hence a dialogue has to be conducted with them and them alone. Sidelining any one of the leaders will not throw up a solution because key sections will remain un represented.
Neither will army action resolve the problem. As it is three shadowy groups - the Baloch Liberation Army, the Baloch National Army and the People's Liberation Army - are involved in an armed struggle and appear to enjoy the sympathy of many of the political leaders and the people.
They have set up training camps - the number quoted varies from 50 to 150 - and have caused 650 bomb blasts and rocket attacks in 2004. If President Musharraf feels he has the weapons to annihilate these groups, he would be well advised to remember that such guerilla fighters have the upper hand when fighting troops which do not enjoy the backing of the people in whose territory the war is taking place.
Hence dialogue remains the only feasible option. The government has done well to set up a parliamentary committee and its subcommittees which have met a number of Baloch leaders and prepared their recommendations which were discussed by the federal cabinet on Sunday.
Until the contents of this report are made public, it is difficult to comment on them. But some recommendations have been leaked out. For instance it is reported that the plans to build three military cantonments (at Gwadar, Sui and Kohlu) have been deferred.
It is also said that 10,000 jobs will be created in the Frontier Constabulary which will be filled by the locals. The gas royalty rates are to be enhanced substantially while the province will be empowered to sign petroleum exploration and sale deals.
It remains to be seen what course the dialogue takes and whether the government in Islamabad will be wise enough to exercise restraint when dealing with the militants. Ultimately it is important that the recommendations made by the committee, especially if they have the backing of the Baloch leaders, are actually implemented and in good faith.
Commitments on paper which are not carried out can misfire by leading to despondency. The government's record in this matter has been poor. How else can one interpret the disclosure by Balochistan's finance minister that in 2003-04 only 25 per cent of the annual development plan fund in the province was actually utilized?
Seeking a loyal servant
One frequently hears people, especially housewives, complaining that servants are no longer what they used to be in the good old days. The feudal spirit in all of us misses the faithful servant who dedicated his whole life in the service of his masters and was ready to do anything for them. None of us bothers to think why a servant should be like that when he too works on the principle of wages for work done.
Some time ago an old couple who has hardly any estate property to fall back upon but retains its feudal instincts, was refusing to believe that there is, or ever was, any such thing as a loyal and dependable servant.
Since they have very little faith in human goodness as such, they do not expect more than the due service and loyalty from their servant(s). All the same they feel hurt that somehow the legendary slave-like servant had never fallen to their lot all these years.
Every day people talk about the fear of "spoilt" servants. They do not believe in trusting them. They think it is the correct thing to treat them strictly. Of course, the servants can't have the same food as the masters. I remember hearing my mother in the old days say so many times to impromptu guests, "I'm sorry there's nothing to eat.
The greedy servants have eaten up all the daal cooked for them!" Many of us frown upon our servants' fondness for wrist watches, transistor radios and expensive clothes.
There is no doubt in our minds that servants should be kept in their proper place. Housewives bewail the alleged uselessness of domestic servants, their indifferent cooking and their habit of making money out of the daily shopping.
In fact, there are a host of problems connected with servants, some of them real and some imagined. One could write a book on the subject. And I suppose another book could be written about what servants think of their employers!
Many of these problems arise because we expect too much from domestic servants, whether men or women. Our concept is that our servant should be more loyal to us than our own kith and kin.
He should be satisfied with less pay and never ask for a raise. One demand on his loyalty is that he should never even dream of leaving us to work elsewhere. Most of us suffer from the delusion that he couldn't find a better place than he has with us.
If the man has a family he should be blind and deaf to their needs, whether material or emotional. When talking with outsiders he should praise our goodness and generosity.
And of course he should always look and behave like a servant, learning to make allowance for our bad temper, and never be ill-tempered or insolent himself. On top of all this he should admit frequently that his life and living depend on our bounty and not on that of the Almighty.
The average lady of the house is no great admirer of the average servant, and even when he goes out of his way to be good and helpful his motives are suspected. "He must be angling for a raise," she says, "or he probably wants to go on leave to see his beastly wife in the hills."
This attitude and general outlook on servants is also to be found in employers who are themselves somebody's servants, either that of the government or a private firm.
These worthies, when talking about their own terms and conditions of service, are highly democratic and liberal - in their own favour of course. They will not brook the most minor deviation from their rights and privileges as employees.
They will quote the conditions of work in Europe and America without bothering to remember the facilities that Europeans and Americans provide to their own domestic helpers.
Is it very difficult for educated people to remember that servants, too, are human and are bound to have human failings? They can't all be perfect (from our point of view) and be like Jeeves, the famous "gentleman's gentleman" of P.G. Wode house.
How much was Jeeves paid, by the way? None of the books mentions his salary. There is certainly ground for looking at the master-servant relationship in our society in a rational way.
The servant is there under a contract, albeit unwritten. He has undertaken to perform certain functions for us in exchange for a monthly emolument and maybe other perquisites like food, clothing and medical attention.
This last we hardly ever provide except for an analgesic tablet when we think he is malingering and feigning a headache. And yet we are ready to go to court if our own employers neglect to provide it to us. Our servant has not sold himself to us body and soul.
His (or the maidservant's) stay with us is as much a business-like arrangement as that between husband and wife or between you and your boss. It calls for mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual goodwill. For the arrangement to be even moderately successful, the accent has to be on mutuality.
A public servant with a reputation for corruption will go red in the face with indignation when he talks about how his servant is dishonest and manages to make five or ten rupees every day out of the purchases for the kitchen. And yet the thought never occurs to him that his own acts are far more reprehensible than his servant's.
I have known of many officers who want the government to be lenient and forget that he overstayed six months in America after completing his official assignment there, but will not forgive their servants' overstay for a week after his visit to his family.
A lady boasts of how she takes no nonsense from her boss. But let one cheeky word come from her maidservant and the poor girl gets a harangue on good behaviour with threats of disciplinary action, including instant dismissal, thrown in Madam would love to pull her hair and give her a slap on the face if she could.
Actually we should be grateful that our domestic servants don't ask us for terms and conditions and other safeguards that are their legal right under the labour laws, or the kind of terms that prevail in the West.
We dislike even their weekly day off in a manner that is nothing short of exploitation, but we advocate two weekly days for ourselves. To conclude, let me tell you what happened a couple of weeks ago.
Our manservant-cum-cook, who has been with us for 20 years, gave a notice in the morning that he was not in a mood to cook that day, and that we better go out somewhere for lunch. We did. And this was not the first time.
The re-coronation of King George
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. - H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
On Capitol Hill tomorrow, at noon Washington time, the 43rd president of the United States of America will take his second oath of office. Looking on the bright side, there's some small consolation in the prospect that this will be the last time.
On the other hand, the inauguration sharpens the realization that we're only halfway through Dubya's reign. Four more years. Just imagine the possibilities .... but perhaps it's best not to, unless you're keen on nightmares.
With $40 million being spent on parties and parades, tomorrow's inauguration will be the costliest in American history. And that doesn't include the $20 million or so it is costing to mount on the tightest security operation Washington has ever seen.
To the consternation of DC residents and local officials, that money will come from the District of Columbia's homeland security budget. Apart from that, the inauguration isn't taxpayer funded (at least not directly): the moolah comes from private donations.
That doesn't mean the average Republican voter, of course, but corporations such as the Marriott hotel chain, Ford, Exxon Mobil, defence contractor Northrop Grumman - and, no doubt, the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel. Although there is a $250,000 cap on contributions, companies can get around it by arranging donations through their subsidiaries.
This hardly qualifies as corporate philanthropy; it seems more like legalized corruption, involving give and take - although it isn't always easy to find out what the corporations are getting in return, beyond extremely generous tax breaks.
In this particular instance, however, many of the donors might consider their money well-spent if they were to be rewarded with a vintage performance by their commander-in-chief. After all, it's unlikely that the Oval Office has ever before been occupied by such an entertaining public speaker.
This trait makes George W. Bush a contradictory character: the progenitor or sponsor of so much adversity is also a natural comedian. Which might have pointed to some potentially intriguing complexities in his mind, but for the fact that whereas the sorrows he cultivates are generally intentional, the humour is usually involuntary.
For all that, fury rather than mirth is the commonest reaction to Bush's forays into oratory. And its polar opposite, wild adulation. On the steps of Capitol Hill tomorrow, loud cheers and unrestrained applause are likely to greet the inaugural address, regardless of what the president says.
But if what he is supposed to say isn't transmitted to him through a hidden earpiece, as it likely was during last year's presidential debates, this is what the leader of the unfree world might sound like:
"Ladies and gentlemen, and my fellow neo cons, "Thanks to your support and generalosity, here we are again! And this time we made it without the persistence of Poppy's Supreme Court dis-appointees.
"So I don't have to thank Their Worships, but I feel obliged to worship Karl Rove, who made it all possible. And God too, of course, it goes without saying. They worked in tandemonium to answer my prayers.
"One of them - I forget which - told the other, 'Now look here, there are lots of fundamentalistically good churchgoing American Christians out there. All you have to do is register them as voters and get them to the polling booths.'
"And so it was that we lured them by offering them not just Dubya but also a ban on abominational homosexual wedlock. It was a offer they couldn't refuse. It was nothing short of a modern miracle, my friends, and I, as your commander-in-chief, now command all of you to fall to your knees and say a prayer.
"Rememorize that but for the grace of my two favourite advisers - one supernatural, the other naturally super - you might have been listening today to John Kerry. I know, I know, the thought doesn't bear contemplatation. It would have been a bigger disaster than the tsunami.
"But that's exactly why we must not forget. And you and I must make sure that all those crypto-communists and peace niks in the Democratic Party can never again grab the strongest and sensitivest organs of our great system. If there is to be any hope of exterminating Al Qaeda and silencing Al Jazeera, we must also dehydrate Al Gore.
"While I am on the subject of what makes American democracy so great, I would also like to thank Diebold Inc for its fantastic voting machines, which have made such a big difference to the electronical process. Why, I'm told that in a few years it may be possible to arrange elections in which no one will need to vote - the machines will do it for you.
"I just love that name, Die-bold. Don't you? I'm told it's a compounded word, one half is a noun and the rest is an objective. And if Diebold democracy is to be one of my administration's superfluous legacies, so be it. I'm proud of it, I tell you. Very proud. We could have done worse, and we have.
"Of course, no democracy is more exemplaristic than the one we will deliver to Iraq in 10 days' time. As you all know, Iraq is being rebuilded with great force. We are wiping out all vestigials of the past, including Babylon. Elections will be the cherry on the cake that will make all of Iraq's neighbours greener with envy.
"You must have heard that our teams found no WMD. Well, that's just too bad. We all know disappearances can be perceptive. If they don't exist, that's only because Saddam Hussein deviously destroyed them. I bet he did it just to spite us - me and my Poppy, that is, and also the United States of America.
"I admit it, ladies and gentlemen, and particularly my yellow feocons - he fooled us. But that didn't get him off the hook, did it? We got him anyway, didn't we? And I bet that at this very moment Saddam must be kicking himself and thinking, 'I wish I hadn't self-destructed my weapons of mass destruction.'
"Well, Saddam, I would say to him if I could, for once I agree with you. "But despite everything, despite all the terrorists who suddenly appeared in Iraq to slow down the march of freedom, we have brought that country to democracy's door.
And we are not going to stop there, my friends. Oh no. This tremendulous success deserves to be repeated. In Iran, in Syria, in North Korea. "And today I want to say to the people of these and several other countries: Dear less fortunate friends, we're determinated to bring democracy to your dark corners of the world. We'll do it no matter what it takes. We'll do it even if we have to kill you first.
"Killing is a beautiful thing if you're doing it for peace and democracy and free trade. Lots of people tell me about the holy commandment 'Thou shalt not kill'.
I tell them: Give me a break. You can't interpret the scriptures so literally. You have to read between the lines. That bit about not killing only applies to God-fearing, Republican-voting, free enterprise-loving Americans.
"Everyone else is fair game. And I know most Americans agree with my government's policies, because they voted for me. "November's election was our accountability moment. Now it's over. No more questions. No more answers. Let's just get on with the job.
"As you all know, the excellent A-team I had gathered around me is just going to get better. I wish I could have rewarded Rummy and Wolfie for all their excellent work, but they are utterably irreplaceable at their present posts.
"And I want to reassure all of you Klans folk down in the Deep South - don't worry about Condi. She's one of us, even more so than her imminent predecesslor. "Like her, Alberto Gonzales is a good man and an old mate of mine. To his credit, he never supported a clememency petition down in Texas when I was governor and he was my counsel.
He's also not been squeamish about how our brave men interrogate enemy prisoners. Sure, there were some bad eggs there who took dirty pictures. Well, we've confiscatered their cameras.
"I musn't forget to mention Porter Goss, who has started to bring the CIA to heel. Henceforth, covert operations will be conducted by the Pentagon. I can't tell you where or when, because these things have to be secreted, but all of you will be kept safe in the meanwhile by Michael Chertoff.
Don't worry, he ain't Russian, and he'll be as effective a Homeland Security chief as Tom Ridge was and Bernard Kerik might have been. "Ladies and gentlemen and my mellow ziocons, I have detained you long enough - and be glad it isn't at Camp X-Ray! It's now time to party! But as you boogie the night away, I would like you to keep one thing in mind: my friends, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
Email: mahirali2@netcape.net.