Allawi
I am beginning to like Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi more and more:
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Allawi dismissed al-Zarqawi as a criminal who would be caught and punished."Abu Musab al-Zarqawi doesn't threaten just me, but the entire country," Allawi told the newspaper, which released a copy of the interview Wednesday night.
"He has killed hundreds of Iraqis, has sown disorder and fear," Allawi was quoted as saying. "But he is just a criminal who must be captured and tried. We are used to threats and we know how to deal with them and how to win."
He sounds like a reasonable, tough, patriotic leader. He won't be our lapdog, for sure, and that's good because it's never really in our long-term interests to have an ally ignore its own long-term interests.
But when all is said and done, the new Iraqi polity and the United States of America, have the same interests: a free, prosperous Iraq defended actively by Iraqis and implicitly by an American standing army.
