Reinforcement of opinions

Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for the Toronto Sun, had (in part) this to say on December 21 about a post-Saddam Iraq:

First, until Saddam's capture, Iraq's Shia majority (60% of the population) remained quiescent, grudgingly accepting foreign occupation for fear Saddam might otherwise return to power.

But with Saddam locked up, Shias are free to forcefully express their pent-up demands for real political power and an Islamic republic.

That's in line with opinions expressed within Iraq, even among some Sunnis, as I noted on Thursday, when I also mentioned sit-ins demanding elections occurring in southern Iraq, which is mostly Shia.

Margolis goes on to say that

[s]econd, during the invasion of Iraq last spring, the elite elements of Iraq's army scattered into small units in the face of overwhelming U.S. firepower and mobility, adopting a long-standing plan to resort to guerrilla war. Hence the surprisingly short Iraq invasion campaign and light resistance in Baghdad.

Seems to me I suggested exactly that over a month ago.

Footnote: Margolis also mentions something which I find doubtful.

Israeli commentator Ze'ev Schiff suggests the White House might offer Saddam a deal: a life prison sentence in exchange for a false confession that he had indeed made and hidden weapons of mass destruction, thus absolving Bush and VP Dick Cheney of the accusation of having made extravagant lies to whip up war against Iraq.

This would inflict mass political destruction on Bush's leading presidential rival, the anti-war Democrat Howard Dean.

That certainly would be a dream scenario for Bushrove, but I don't see it happening for three reasons:

One, while the possibility of life in prison rather than death may look good to Saddam, I'm not at all convinced he would be willing to give up a trial, his place on the world stage, the forum from which he can one last time strike back at his enemies by detailing how they used to be his friends and supported him and ignored his crimes all through the 1980s.

That's particularly true because two, to the extent such a confession would be a good negotiating offer, to that same extent he could employ it at almost any time, even after a trial starts. He's not stuck with doing it at a time of Bushrove's choosing.

And three, the immediate response would be "Then where are they? If you made them and ordered them hidden, you should know where they are. So where are they?" While the possibility of being politically potent would still exist, it would be hard to square such a confession with the facts on the ground in Iraq and easy to label it "the desperate ploy of a beaten tyrant, so brave when torturing and murdering his own people, now just a craven coward who'll say anything to save his miserable hide."