Interesting exchange on Slate....

Iraq and Al-Qaida By Warren Bass and Jeffrey Goldberg

Kanan Makiya, the great Iraqi writer and dissident, argues that the Baghdad regime is similar in ideology and practice to the European fascist dictatorships of the 1930s. This makes it fundamentally different from every other ridiculous Third World dictatorship currently holding a seat in the U.N. General Assembly. Saddam's Iraq is the quintessence of a security state, built on paranoia and homicide and Big Brother surveillance; its charismatic and megalomaniacal Great Leader thinks of himself as father of his people; his regime engages in racialist thought; it commits genocide; it seeks Lebensraum; and on and on and on. ...

So, what is conservative, or neoconservative, about Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle (or Dick Cheney) standing in the front line against fascism? I didn't realize that the fight against fascism is solely the province of the neoconservative movement. Isn't the real story here not the muscular unilateralism of the neocons, but the moral abdication of the moderate left, which is missing a chance to defeat a genocidal fascist?

Hmmm...? Goldberg is author of....

The New Yorker: Fact

THE GREAT TERROR
by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
In northern Iraq, there is new evidence of Saddam Hussein's genocidal war on the Kurds—and of his possible ties to Al Qaeda.

Some absolutely disturbing reading.