Re: CNN is reporting...
AA717driver said:
They must have learned their trade from Hitler and Stalin.
TC
Actually this is extremely close to the truth. The Baath Party was structured on the National Socialism model of the same stripe and during the same era as the two you mentioned, with the additional facet of being designed to control a Muslim populace. The regular Iraqi Army is similar to the regualar German Army of WW2. The Republican Guard is much like the SS. Internal control of the populace assured by the Feydayeen, who terrorize the populace and act as a secret police just as the Gestapo did. Even the simplistic visuals and propoganda this regime uses are straight out of the playbook developed back then. Even their trappings are similar. None of this is coincidence...it was designed to be that way from it's inception.
Founded during the early 1940s by Arab intellectuals educated in France (no suprise here, France was a hotbed of socalistic tripe back then just as they are today ), it's no suprise the Baath Party/Hussein has always received the bulwark of it's support from the Soviets and the French. Even Bin Laden recognized this and railed against the "socialists" in Iraq, and although many people in the region erroneously support Hussein for religious reasons, the Baath Party's willingness to expend the lives of anyone...man, woman, or child...in an attempt to retain power is classic nat'l socialism. The other day the Iraqi Minister of "Information" said that any Iraqi age 14 and up would be carrying a weapon and fighting. I think that was about the age Hitler Youth were ordered out to fight during the dying gasps of the 3rd Reich.
IMO, this war has more to do with political ideology than religion,culture,or oil, no matter how much the "peace activists" are duped into thinking differently. Iraq (along with N Korea) is one of the last remnants of militant National Socialism/Stalinism, and a dying leftover from the Cold War where Iraq was in the periphery of the sphere of Soviet influence. The lesson of N Korea is that such dictatorships can be handed down to a son, and Hussein has 2 sons eager to take over the "family business". Faced with the possiblilty of this regime lasting for DECADES into the future, this war is about removing the threat to everyone around it.