The X-Bomb

Recently, the Iraq Study Group Report has created much buzz, almost as much as Britney crotch shots. It currently sells at $6.57 at Amazon, but you can download it for free in PDF.

The global consensus, as presented in the report, is that the US failed to succeed in Iraq. Powell gone, Rumsfeld gone, Bush still funny, and even the remaining neocons are in agreement with pulling out of Iraq.

An obvious failure, right?

Think again..

What did the US fail to do in Iraq? To bring peace and democracy and civilization and freedom? Great balls of fire..

Iraq was invaded by the coalition forces, based on "mistaken" intelligence about mass destruction weapons. Does anybody remember that, nowadays? No, it's confessed and forgotten.

Insurgency. Honestly, I had never heard the word until the Iraq invasion. It's a cleverly picked up word. If you're too lazy (or too hooked up with my rant) to follow the link, this is what it means:

in·sur·gen·cy : the quality or state of being insurgent; specifically : a condition of revolt against a government that is less than an organized revolution and that is not recognized as belligerency

Nice one. Already feels scornful enough. But WTF is belligerency?

bel·lig·er·en·cy : the state of being at war or in conflict; specifically : the status of a legally recognized belligerent state or nation

Ahh.. Now, that rings a bell..

Looking for weapons of mass destruction? Let me tell you a tale about them.

Once upon a time, there was the H-Bomb. They were majestic when used, and few nations had them. Then, more nations got their own, and ironically, the probability of someone using them faded away.

Why? Because it's inhumane. It's an all-out act of crime, mushroom cloud and all. Much like the invasion of Iraq, which is in every aspect illegal with respect to international law, the UN Charter, and plain ethics.

You must be really curious if you've read this far, all this boring stuff. Here comes the nice part — I'll introduce you to the latest addition to the weapons of mass destruction, the X-Bomb.

Actually, it's not that new. You've seen it at work in Sarajevo. In Tbilisi, Georgia. In Beirut, time and again. And now in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Also known as "divide and conquer".

The X-Bomb doesn't let out a mushroom cloud. It's much stealthier. It can even be dropped in peace-time, without raising alerts.

The science behind the X-Bomb is simple: you take a nation, and draw a big bold "X" right in the middle.

During the Yugoslavian civil war, I recall a scene from a TV interview. The camera crew arrive in a small village. Of the couple hundred people that used to live there, only an old man is still alive. I can't really remember if he was a Bosnian or a Serb or a Croat, and it doesn't matter. The reporter tries to get the story of the massacre, he asks, through a translator, things like "Were your townsfolk killed by snipers?" "Were there tanks?" "Which direction did they come from?" The old man shakes his head all the time, in tears. Finally, he says something like "What are you talking about? It was our people. I had been to the wedding of the man who killed my wife. The kids of the man who killed my grandsons used to play at our home".

That, my friends, is the X-Bomb. That scene of the old man truly makes me sad.

Has the US failed? Not at all. They've done an amazing job. The Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds, the Turkomans, who had been living in harmony on the same soil for thousands of years, have now turned against each other. Neighbours are killing neighbours in Baghdad, in Kirkuk.

This is no tale, it's the reality. That's the civilization and freedom that has been brought to Iraq. I am not exaggerating, I am not being partisan. It's all over the news: Shiites bomb Sunnis, Sunnis kill Kurds, Kurds slaughter Turkomans, Turkomans bomb Shiites.

The USA has succeeded. The X-Bomb did a swell job in Iraq.