Gimme Shelter! (MeK Edition)

By Cernig

The Iraqi government have been threatening for over a year to expel the utterly-nutterly IslamoMarxist terrorists of the Mujahedeen e-Kalq, aka the MeK, aka the PMOI and to put some of their key leaders on trial for atrocities they committed during the time when they were Saddam's bully boys. It hasn't happened yet but they're still threatening it.

“The Iraqi government is responsible for their security and it continues to implement its plans to shut down the camp and to either deport its population to their country or to a third country,” it said in a statement after the visit led by Iraqi national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.

“Remaining in Iraq is not an option for them,” the statement added.

Matt Duss explains why it hasn't happened before now.

While it’s now understood that, despite the Bush administration’s claims, Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have any significant relationship with Al Qaeda, Saddam did have relationships with other terrorist organizations, one of which was the MEK. In addition to receiving financial, logistical and material support from from Saddam to carry out attacks inside Iran, “MEK forces also assisted the Iraq regime in the repression of Kurds and other minorities in northern Iraq.”

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sec. Donald Rumsfeld declared the MEK “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which is to say that a designated terrorist group known to have carried out attacks that killed Americans enjoyed greater legal protections than your average Iraqi picked up after curfew. The decision to protect the MEK — possibly for the purpose of carrying out future attacks against Iran — also revealed one of the underlying premises of the U.S. war on terror — the idea that we would make “no distinction” between terrorists and those who harbor them — to be just empty rhetoric.

This was not lost on Iran.

The neocon Manly Men managed to convince the UK government to rescind their designation of the MeK as a terror group several months ago - and there's a conservative push to get Bush to do likewise before he leaves office. That means that the "third country" the Iraqis are talking about sending these terrorists to might be Britain and/or America. They can't all go work for FOX News.