{"id":688,"date":"2003-07-23T09:23:11","date_gmt":"2003-07-23T13:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=688"},"modified":"2003-07-23T09:23:11","modified_gmt":"2003-07-23T13:23:11","slug":"a-test-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=688","title":{"rendered":"a test case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk seems remarkably ungenerous and pessimistic in his report<\/a> of the death of Saddam’s sons, which should surely be a cause for general rejoicing. But he thinks it will make things worse. The fear of Saddam’s return will diminish with their death, he believes; but the effect of this will be to increase resistance to the occupation. Until now, the Islamists have feared that Saddam might make a comeback once the Americans leave. If he is dead, they need fear this no longer, and will step up their war.<\/p>\n\n


\nThis is so counter to everything the Americans, and most of the press, believe, that it makes an interesting test case. We’ll see soon enough — say, by Christmas — who is right. If the attacks are still continuing then, and if they survive Saddam’s demise, then Fisk is right, and this is a national\/islamist movement. If they stop, the Americans are right, and it’s Saddamite holdovers. But when I think about it, I am inclined to believe that Fisk is right. I do hope he is not.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk seems remarkably ungenerous and pessimistic in his report of the death of Saddam’s sons, which should surely be a cause for general rejoicing. But he thinks it will make things worse. The fear of Saddam’s return will diminish … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}