Iraq: We ask, they tell Us
Q. How long will a sixth of a million US troops be tied down in the killing fields of Iraq?
A. Maybe until 2010.
Q. Would Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim really risk completely alienating the Sunni Arabs by passing a law permitting the formation down the road of a Shiite provincial confederacy while the Sunni delegates were boycotting the parliament session?
A. Yes! (When a spouse is planning a divorce, no more reason to make the other spouse happy.)
Sunni Arabs only agreed to run for office and participate in last December's elections because they were promised an effective voice on this sort of issue, over which they had rejected the new constitution in all three provinces they dominate. This parliamentary maneuver has left the Sunni Arabs looking like fools and has left Iraq looking as though it has a tyranny of the Shiite majority. Expect more Sunni Arab violence as a result.
What I can't figure out is where Abdul Aziz got the 140 votes from. The Kurds will have supported him, with 58 seats. But then his Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its independent allies in the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance only had 63 seats when the prime ministerial elections were held. That is 121. They picked up an astonish 19 seats. Did al-Da`wa, the party of the prime minister, defect to al-Hakim on this one? That is the only thing that would make sense of the vote to me. The Sadr Movement, Fadhila, and the Sunnis were opposed.
Al-Zaman says that it only passed by 138 votes, and gave the headline of "A Black Day for Iraq." Parliamentarians were warning that the new law sets the stage for the partition of Iraq. Some are challenging the validity of a law with constitutional implications being passed by just a single vote.
Q. Does Bush keep saying things about the origins of the Iraq War that just are not true?
A. Yes! SeeRobert Parry on 'Bush and his dangerous Delusions.' What he said.
On Thursday morning, militiamen raided the offices of a new television station oriented to Sunni Arabs, killing six.
Reuters reports deadly political violence. Four more US troops were announced killed. Other major incidents (click on link for full report):
' BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded at an intersection in the mostly Shi'ite district of Amil, southwestern Baghdad, killing five labourers and wounding six . . .
BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed four members of one family and wounded two others after they broke into their house in Doura district, southern Baghdad, a source at the Interior Ministry said.
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded near the mortuary of Yarmouk hospital in west-central Baghdad, killing one and wounding six, including three policemen, an Interior Ministry source said. . .
BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded near the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in northern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding seven . . .
KUT - The bodies of five men bound and blindfolded with multiple gunshot wounds, bearing signs of torture, were separately found in central Kut . . .
*NEAR NAJAF - Police detained four al Qaeda suspects near Najaf, southern Iraq, a Najaf governorate spokesman said. One of the detainees, identified as Bassim Quweidir, is suspected of involvement in the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, which sparked a wage of sectarian bloodshed.'
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/12/2006 12:30:00 AM
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JC: What I can't figure out is where Abdul Aziz got the 140 votes from. (&c. &c.)
Dr. Visser's tea leaves explain the voting on the decentralization bill as follows, although some of his numbers don't obviously agree with Prof. Cole's. Even the exact vote is not clear, accordding to him:
No more than some 140 parliamentarians – accounts vary from 138 to 141 or around half of the 275 members of the assembly turned up for the vote (all voted in favour of the bill) . . . .
The principal backers of the bill were the Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who together account for 88 seats. The balance of some 50 seats is believed to have come at least partly from Iyad Allawi’s secularist alliance of 25 representatives – whose principal figures reportedly took part in the vote (Hamid Musa, Mahdi al-Hafiz, Wail Abd al-Latif, Safiyya al-Suhayl and Mufid al-Jazairi have all been specifically mentioned). The remaining votes that were required – perhaps between 30 and 40 (and unspecified number of Allawi supporters protested against its leaders and stayed away from the vote) – must have come primarily from the “grey” middle segment of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the 54 or so deputies who are neither SCIRI nor Sadrist and label themselves “independents” or come from one of the two main Daawa factions. Lately the Daawa faction called Tanzim al-Iraq has changed its traditionally anti-federal rhetoric, and with its party mouthpiece now attacking those who “reject federalism on the pretext of national unity” it is very likely that they are drifting towards a pro-SCIRI position. On this particular vote they may have been joined by some members of the main Daawa branch as well as by independents, but the numbers make is clear that there must have been additional Shiite resistance to the bill on top of the protests by Fadila and the main Sadrist faction . . . .
What does Da`wa Tanzim al-Iraq know that the rest of us don't?
For that matter, who is Da`wa Tanzim al-Iraq? Which of the Ayatollahs do they belong to?
I think the Kurds, because of their pro-US orientation, are not taking enough of the blame for this issue. If the Kurds had not pressed for independence, it would never have been put on the table.
And if the Kurds had not gotten assurances from the US that the US would protect the Kurds from both the Iraqis and Turkey, Iran and Syria after independence, the Kurds would not have pressed for the level of independence they pressed for.
And if the US was opposed to the partition of Iraq, it would not have given the Kurds assurances the Kurds needed to brush off the rest of the country and their neighbors, including, for a long time, the Shiites.
Once the Kurds were serious and had US backing, the Shiites asked for and got what the Kurds got. The alternative would have been an independent Kurdistan and a "Unity Government" in the rest of Iraq where Khalizad settled all disputes between Sunnis and Shiites in America's favor. The Americans cannot get through their heads that a role like that for Khalizad is not acceptable to anybody in Iraq.
The necessary factor in the break up of Iraq was not the Shiites, it was not Iran, in a real sense it was not the Kurds. The United States broke up Iraq, and had to know it was doing so as it happened.
The US gets bases in Kurdistan, landlocked and surrounded by hostile countries. Nasrallah and Iran get a propaganda victory and an example of exactly how the US intends to dismantle Arab states and spur civil war - something only Hezbollah's divine leadership prevented in Lebanon. Their argument is sounding better and better in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Not just to the man in the street, but also to the leaderships.
Vote counts range from 138 in Azzaman and Al-Mada, to 148 in Al-Hayat. The Western press, when they report a number say 140. Al-Mada goes part way in explaining what happened. The Speaker ordered everyone but the actual members out of the chamber, even their staff and so on; and he ordered the electronic transmission of proceedings to the outside to be cut before the vote started. So it seems no one for the press or anywhere else was there to count the votes. The other thing is it took quite a while to pressure people to come in and vote, so that might have contributed to the situation. I have some links and a discussion at my blog
"What he said."
"There’s always been the frightening question of what would happen if a President of United States went completely bonkers. But there is an equally disturbing issue of what happens if a President loses touch with reality, especially if he is surrounded by enough sycophants and enablers so no one can or will stop him."
Perhaps the AMA could summon the courage to render the conclusion that the chief executive is not capable of fulfilling his duties, and neither is Bush.
the Parry piece is very good. I would also say it's very depressing but by now the depth and breadth of Bush's ignorance and the degree to which he is shielded from the realities in Iraq are well-known to anyone who is paying attention.
It's only the little details that boggle the mind... how tragic and shameful that the most powerful nation on Earth is ruled by such an incompetent, who is not just accustomed to spinning bad news as good news, but truly believes his own BS. I am absolutely certain that Bush thinks the death and carnage in Iraq are signs of progress.
Were there any Roman emperors who were similarly as sheltered from reality and moronic as Bush is?
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