Wednesday, January 19, 2005
The New Yorker just loves those anonymous sources. This story appears to be a re-cycle of a re-cycled urban legend/rumor in a land of urban legends and rumors that was reported upon months ago - of Iyad Allawi unceremoniously and personally executing seven hooded prisoners. Only now there are a few more, "No really, I talked to someone who talked to someone who know it happened..." stories. The same anonymous person who claims to have been a witness is quoted now as was quoted back then.
US official confirms Allawi shot six dead
That's an anonymous US Official one Jordanian Official removed.
The claim is in an extensive profile of Dr Allawi written for this week's issue of the magazine by an American journalist, Jon Lee Anderson, the author of The Fall of Baghdad and a regular Baghdad correspondent for The New Yorker.
Writing about his research in Jordan in December, Anderson says: "A well-known former government minister told me that an American official had confirmed that the killings took place, saying to him, 'What a mess we're in - we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another one'."...
Of course, depending on what estimates you accept, and even if you accept that this story is true, that's one son of a bitch who's about a multiple of 400,000 to 1,000,000 short of the old son of bitch, ensconced in a system - a nascent accountable democracy - that tends to cuff sons of bitches.
