A senior Iraqi politician Wednesday criticized the United States for planning to purge thousands of top Baathists from office, warning the policy would force some to go underground and wage a terrorist fightback. Iyad Allawi said heavily armed Baathists were already forming clandestine groups, having prepared for the post-Saddam Hussein era six months before the war.
| And that means we should leave them in their jobs? Does that make sense to anyone else? (I thought not...) |
Allawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord (INA) who returned from long exile after Saddam was toppled in April, said the US-led administration should go after the criminal elements in the Baath but spare the innocent majority. Bremer's staff plan to vet some 15,000-30,000 people from the top four ranks of Saddam's former ruling Baath Party, out of a total membership of up to 700,000. |