I and some other journalists had lunch with Senator Joe Lieberman the other day and we listened to him talking about Iraq. Either Senator Lieberman is so divorced from reality that he's completely lost the plot or he knows he's spinning a line. Because one of my colleagues turned to me in the middle of this lunch and said he's not talking about any country I've ever been to and yet he was talking about Iraq, the very country where we were sitting.
A couple of months later he tells us:
've spent the last three years immersed in this conflict, but after only two months away I'm amazed at how quickly this war has mutated into something even worse than it was before. We're now seeing a sectarian element nothing like we've previously seen. Even ordinary families, people who are in no way combatants are suddenly talking about fellow Iraqis in terms of "us" and "them."
...
Saddam's trial is nothing but a distraction. To the Iraqis, there's no question of Saddam's guilt, or of the final outcome of the judicial process — Saddam will die. The question for them is, why is it taking so long and why is he being given a platform? For whose benefit is this trial being run? For Western domestic consumption; it's for the international community. It's not the healing or reconciliation process for Iraqis some might like to make it out to be. Saddam has been the dominant figure in the courtroom and the political winner.