Domenici Calls for Change of Course
Shiite Wedding bombed
Sadrists Reject Oil Law
Republican Senator Pete Domenici has joined the small but expanding ranks of Republicans in Congress who are demanding a change of course in the Iraq War, having lost faith in the surge.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called for Iraqi security forces to take primary responsibility for the southern Shiite port city of Basra within 3 months, such that thereafter British troops would play only a supporting role. British forces have withdrawn from three of the four provinces where they were the primary providers of security before this year. Iraqi police and army commanders still call on the British to intervene in particularly large or difficult disturbances, even in the provinces they have evacuated.
The Sadr movement in the Iraqi parliament has rejected the current draft of the petroleum law on anti-American grounds:
' Sadr's supporters said they would not support any law that would allow firms "whose governments are occupying Iraq" -- a reference to the United States, Britain and their coalition allies -- to sign Iraqi oil deals . . . We reject this unclear law that contains a number of points which prevent us from accepting it," said Sheikh Salah al-Obaidi, a Sadr office spokesman in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf.
According to Sawt al-Iraq writing in Arabic, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called Thursday on Iraqi authorities to quickly revise the constitution so as to reduce the salience of sectarian politics. Most Iraqi Sunni Arabs reject the constitution's provisions for further provincial confederacies or regional governments, fearing that they will lead to a break-up of the country. Since the Sunni Arabs reject even soft partition, and are fighting against the idea of further regional governments, you obviously cannot solve Iraq's problems with a soft partition of the country. The prospect of it is among the things fueling the sectarian civil war as it is!
Guerrillas car-bombed a Shiite wedding in Baghdad on Thursday evening, killing 17 and wounding 25. Reuters says that 24 bodies were found in the capital yesterday, and that guerrillas used a roadside bomb to kill 3 Iraqi policemen in the southern Shiite city of Hilla.
Other major incidents according to Reuters:
' BAGHDAD - Two U.S. soldiers were killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad on Thursday, the military said. . .
ISHAQI - At least six people were killed, including three police commandos, when gunmen ambushed a police convoy in Ishaqi, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .
BAGHDAD - Two guards were killed when gunmen attacked a bank in the Saidiya district of southern Baghdad, police said. The branch was not robbed but two other guards were kidnapped. . .
YUSUFIYA - Two Iraqi soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Yusufiya, 15 km (9 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. Four other soldiers were hurt in the attack.
SAMAWA - At least three people were killed in the southern city of Samawa during clashes between Iraqi police and the Medhi militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, police said. Clashes began after police tried to arrest a Sadr official. Two of the dead were police and there were eight people wounded. '
McClatchy adds of Diyala Province that "A source in the 5th Iraqi army division said that 4 Iraqi soldiers were killed while they were going to give support to another Iraqi army force fighting insurgents from Al Qaida organization in Al Dainiyah village south Baladrooz town east of Baquba city today afternoon. The same source confirmed that another 3 soldiers were injured in an IED explosion targeted their patrol in Imam Mansour area east Baquba today morning."
Authorities are having a 10-foot-deep ditch dug around the Shiite holy city of Karbala, in hopes of keeping criminal elments out fo the city.
Thom Hartmann on the Libby conspiracy in the White House and what James Madison would have thought of it.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/06/2007 06:30:00 AM
7 Comments:
Only the brain-dead and Republican Party Hacks had faith in the surge. It was doomed from any angle that anyone with functioning neurons chose to look at it. Now a bunch of these "Day Late and a Dollar Short" Party Faithful are looking to save the party's skin. They aren't in the least bit concerned about the thousands of lost lives, a devastated country, a civil war raging in the streets, millions displaced, millions suffering. No, the poll numbers have finally gotten their attention. They are concerned about poll numbers,verrrrry low poll numbers. And what really has them sweating bullets is the fact that the Democrat candidates have raised more money than the Republican candidates. You want to get their attention? Talk campaign money. Money is their god. Truth, justice,and decency are inconvenient virtues. They can readily be ignored. God knows, Bush has always given them short shrift. But MONEY?! Democrats with more money?! Watch the Republicans run for the door, panic written all over their faces.
"The Sadr movement in the Iraqi parliament has rejected the current draft of the petroleum law on anti-American grounds:"
Emphasis mine. While I've no doubt that Al Sadr is anti-American your bias is showing.
Your country Juan, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraki civilians. When one includes all those who died as a result of sanctions which were imposed and enforced primarily at the behest of … of whom? … At the behest of your country Juan. Remember the "we think the price is worth it" slip?
When one adds in those deaths, your country Juan, is not only well in to genocidal territory but has been for rather a long time.
The green zone government law that Al-Sadr opposes permits corporations, primarily from your country Juan, to rape Irak's resources and treasury once your military have committed enough war crimes to enable them to do so.
You don't have to be anti-American to oppose letting a pack of war criminals and profiteers get even more obscenely wealthy at the expense of whatever Irakis are left in Irak.
You just have to be pro-humanity.
A failure to approve an oil law will be the nail in the coffin of the al-Maliki government. The Sadrist refusal to let US or UK firms to participate in the industry should be enough to convince even the most pachydermish Texan or flag-dazed West Virginian that the occupation is not leading anywhere.
Nonetheless, various NYT or WaPo journalists continue to ascribe to Shiite leaders a reluctance to see the US exit quickly. Their sources seem to be US sources, citing US sources, and so on. At best, there is an occational op-ed article in English that praises the US and bears the name of some current Iraqi cabinet member. Is there a single Sadrist or SCIRI document, communiqué, or major speech in Arabic that endorses the US occupation or surge? It is one thing to believe something in private or say something to please your patron. It is something else to proclaim it to a mass audience in their language.
It is unfortunate that men who one would think know better, like Sen. Domenici, have taken so long to reach the obvious conclusion. Many conservative (admittedly, only a very small band of House members) opposed the Iraq invasion from the beginning. Sen. Domenici could have accessed the counsel of many skeptical and dissenting conservatives/Republicans, including Andrew Bacevich, Brent Scowcroft, Pat Buchanan, even Robert Novak (of the Plame conspiracy). But, since the war continues today, every opponent ought to be welcomed.
Clearly, the Shiite power brokers are playing the occupation for self-interest. Doubtless, the average Shia on the street wants us gone from the country, but the Shia parties other than Sadr will not make unequivocal public statements to that effect. They are playing their cards close to the vest.
As an aside, Juan's description of Sadr's motive as "anti-American" is very clearly supported by the language expressed by the Sadrists. They are opposed to American involvement, hence anti-American is quite accurate in its non-pejorative sense. Dr. Cole is simply using the term in its proper grammatical sense. That Mark prefers to deal in pejoratives is his choice.
Concerning the use of the anti-american word, I'm with Mark from Ireland on that.
The Bushites and the right wing label all criticism of the US as anti-americanism. This nowadays it has got a pejorative sense. It is like implying "these guys are just opposing Americans without any good reasons. In the EU the few supporters of the Iraq war and the Bushites have done it continually : if you uttered a critique of Bush or his foreign politic : you were just anti-americans. If you dared say that the invasion of Iraq had been undertaken out of greee for oil and not against WMD or in order to foster democracy, you were "anti-americans".
It was the same with Israel : if you dared criticize the politic of Sharon or Olmert and the Likudniks, it's only because you were antisemites. Not because you had serious ground to question the politics they were waging.
Labelling anyone "anti-americans" allows them to avoid responding to the justified critics. Once a word has been attributed a new meaning, it's very difficult to continue to use it in its original sense. Mark from Ireland is right to point at it. If I wasn't a little lazy yesterday, I'd have pointed to it as well.
To Christiane (in Geneva?) and Mark (in Dublin?):
What would you have thought about the US if, instead of invading Iraq, it had: A) continued the policy of sanctions and containment, B) normalized relations with Saddam, more or less as with Franco in 1953 or Mao in 1971, or C) some mix of A and B.
If the answer is "all are equally evil" or "nothing can ever redeem US imperialism other than its complete annihilation, then you don't give much breathing room for any real-world decisionmaker, whether American or not.
By the way, no one ever accused the Irish of detesting a fight, and the Swiss are curiously reluctant to abolish their army or compulsory reserve service.
The link you provided quotes the Sadr spokesman as saying that their primary objection to the proposed oil law is its provision for "production sharing agreements" with foreign oil companies (rather than service contracts which virtually all oil-producing nations in the world have adopted, to maximize benefits to the national owners of the resources rather than unnecessarily giving far greater benefits to the foreign oil companies). Saudi Arabia long ago discarded "production sharing agreements" in favor of service contracts. Is Saudi Arabia "anti-American" for limiting American (and other foreign) oil companies to less lucrative service contracts? On this issue (as on most others like one central Iraqi government, not three sectarian entities), the Sadrists are primarily "pro-Iraqi," not "anti-American."
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