Monday, January 31, 2005

While the Saudi King of Jordan was the first "leader" to call and congratulate Allawi yesterday, his press continues its love affair with Saddam. The Jordanian media has cultivated such a distatesfully favorable picture of Saddam. Just the other day, the Jordanian paper Al-`Arab Al-Yawm published yet another interview with Saddam's pathetic Iraqi lawyer who loves to tell how excited he was when he met his former dictator. You would not know from that interview that Saddam was a detested tyrant. Iraqis (of different stripes) are rightly outraged by any Arab expression of sympathy or praise for Saddam. Yesterday, I heard a well-known Arab nationalist (Ma`n Bashshur of Lebanon) say that he still considers Saddam to be "the president of Iraq." That really is insulting to the Iraqi people who suffered under Saddam. I do not understand why any opposition to US occupation should manifest itself in praise for Saddam.