Jewish World Review April 29, 2003 / 27 Nisan, 5763

Joe Scarborough

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Shiites biting the hand that released them


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Some Shiite Muslims in Iraq will keep biting the hand that released them from the murderous grip of Saddam Hussein. If you want to know why, here’s the “Real Deal.”

LAST WEEK, millions of Muslims took part in a pilgrimage that would have gotten them thrown in jail a few months ago. Why, it was an extraordinary moment in Iraqi and American history.

We all saw pictures of Muslim families openly worshiping their G-d as they wished, without fear of imprisonment or fear of death. Ah, but soon after the miraculous march, we saw pictures of Shiite leaders organizing anti-American mobs, who had the gall to demand the eviction of their liberators. It sounds like the ingrates who protest against our military, which guarantee their rights to protest.

Now, some say the Shiite protests weren’t too well-organized and had all the spontaneity of a Republican National Convention. And I agree. Others in this administration laughed off the events as crude attempts to shape the post-Saddam Iraq. Now, to me, they looked like a ham-fisted political move that I would have expected from some dweeb in my high school student council.

But hey, only a fool, or a liberal journalist, would fail to see these protests for what they really were: clumsy attempts by radical Iranian Muslims to turn Iraq into its sister state. Here’s a message from Donald Rumsfeld today. And this is the message he delivered to them earlier today: Get lost. You messed up your own country. Don’t even think about messing up Iraq.

Hey, boys, this isn’t 1979 anymore, and you aren’t dealing with Jimmy Carter, either. Instead, you’re dealing with George Bush. And he’s made it clear that American men and women did not die in the sands of Iraq to let one tyrant be replaced by another tyrant.

The citizens of Iraq must all be free to worship as they please. They’ve got to be free to speak as they please, and they’ve got to be free to live as they please, or else our American heroes will have died in vain. That simply is not going to happen this time.

The Shiites in Iraq and Iran had better get it straight that George W. Bush will not be intimidated. George W. Bush will not be pushed around, either. He means business. And that business is all about freedom for the good people of Iraq.

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Former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) hosts “Scarborough Country,” 10 p.m. ET, weeknights on MSNBC. Comment by clicking here.



04/28/03: What the capitulation of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, means for the rest of the world's tyrants
04/25/03: Noble-sounding names mask political motives
04/22/03: Bill Clinton should heed Paul McCartney's advice
04/21/03: The president with an I.Q. of a pot of clay has made New York City elitists look like a bunch of bumbling idiots
04/16/03: Russia, France and Germany: Not stupid, just immoral
04/15/03: CNN's too little, too late apology
04/14/03: Who's the first elitist to admit they were wrong about the war?
04/10/03: He's baaack --- and his terror tactics deserve an 'F'
04/09/03: Iraqi lawyer and American teenaged girl proved themselves to be 'The Real Deal'

© 2003, MSNBC