But You Wouldn't Want To Live There...

John Negroponte is like a political version of the oft-repeated Field of Dreams line, "If you build it, they will come." One week after Negroponte being named the US Ambassador to Iraq, the Marines in Fallujah are turning over control of the city to a militia of ex-Saddam loyalists. I've said this before, the situation is a death squad waiting to happen.

This was a statement in Thursday's Washington Post:

Some American officials familiar with efforts to pacify Fallujah said they were concerned about the background of the participants and questioned whether they would be screened for past human-rights abuses and other crimes.

Essentially, the US is handing control of Fallujah back over to Saddam's military. The same military that committed such atrocities on it's fellow countrymen that, now according to this administration, US forces had to be called into action to eliminate it. This is how the Post described Jassim Mohammed Saleh, the US choice to command the militia.

Earlier in his military career, Saleh served in the Republican Guard, an elite branch of the army used at times to suppress internal dissent by former president Saddam Hussein.

Question. How long before Saleh proclaims himself defacto Mayor of Fallujah and starts rounding up dissenters?