I’ve been keeping up with news of the mass kidnapping that happened at the Iraq Ministry of Higher Education building recently. The news is vague, which is always a sign that the whole story isn’t being told. Those who were there are saying about a hundred men were hauled off in trucks. The official government story is that it was about 40, and they have mostly been released. For th moment, I tend to believe the people that were actually there.

My speculation, because I know you want to hear my speculation about it, is the same thing I have been saying for a while now:

New boss, same as the old boss … just a little more polished, with a better stage appearance, and not quite as evil (yet).

I’ll admit I am wrong, if it turns out I am, but my feeling is this democracy we have set up in Iraq is little more than the beginning of yet another future dictatorship that will rival Saddam’s and possibly exceed it in cruelty and evil due to its religious undertones.

Those who have been there and are there now can keep telling me that it’s really not as bad as it seems, and I won’t hold it against you when you tell me about the schools you have been opening and how things are getting better … because I know that’s the military line. When you have mass abductions happening and large numbers of civilians dying violent deaths on a daily basis, it really doesn’t matter how many schools have been opened. The Iraq situation is still, on the whole, going very poorly.