Calls for calm as crowd stones Iraqi PM

[ECH1969]

Angry fellow Shi'ites stoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's motorcade in a Shi'ite stronghold of Baghdad on Sunday in a display of fury over a devastating car bomb that tore through their area.

Maliki was visiting the Sadr City slum to pay respects to some of the 202 victims of last week's devastating bombing.

"It's all your fault!" one man shouted as, in unprecedented scenes, a hostile crowd began to surge around the premier and then jeered as his armored convoy edged through the throng away from a mourning ceremony.

The area is a base for the Mehdi Army militia led by Maliki's fellow Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-11-26T144427Z_01_COL153081_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

[mike_c]

1. Maliki is the Karzai of Iraq-- a puppet utterly dependent upon the U.S....

...to maintain his very survival. His life expectancy is not good, IMO.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Jesus warned people about serving two masters

al-Maliki serves al-Sadr and Bush, two sworn enemies of one another. Like Karzai, the only question is which is shorter, his political career or his life?

We would be better off staging a coup, drop all pretenses of democracy, and put a strongman like the secular Allawi or put Saddam back in power.

I would prefer putting Saddam back in power because he will really be a big stinker to all the religious factions in Iraq, plus he will impose law and order.

[yurbud]

18. yur kidding I hope. A dictator would benefit oil companies, not Iraqis or us.

[IndianaGreen]

23. I am not the only saying that Iraq would be better off with Saddam back in power

Published on Sunday, November 26, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

Bring Back Saddam Hussein

Restoring the dictator to power may give Iraqis the jolt of authority they need. Have a better solution?

by Jonathan Chait

The debate about Iraq has moved past the question of whether it was a mistake (everybody knows it was) to the more depressing question of whether it is possible to avert total disaster. Every self-respecting foreign policy analyst has his own plan for Iraq. The trouble is that these tracts are inevitably unconvincing, except when they argue why all the other plans would fail. It's all terribly grim.

So allow me to propose the unthinkable: Maybe, just maybe, our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power.

Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale.

At the outset of the war, I had no high hopes for Iraqi democracy, but I paid no attention to the possibility that the Iraqis would end up with a worse government than the one they had. It turns out, however, that there is something more awful than totalitarianism, and that is endless chaos and civil war.

Nobody seems to foresee the possibility of restoring order to Iraq. Here is the basic dilemma: The government is run by Shiites, and the security agencies have been overrun by militias and death squads. The government is strong enough to terrorize the Sunnis into rebellion but not strong enough to crush this rebellion.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1126-26.htm

[Irreverend IX]

24. Outright genocide may be around the corner.

Many Sunnis living near Shia-controlled regions have been abducted and killed for no reason other than their religion. I wonder if the militias will decide to perpetrate a full-scale Sunni extermination campaign to solidify their hold on Iraq. Unless a peace process can take root, which will be very difficult indeed, that's the only logical end to the Iraqi infighting. Bush will have a lot to answer for...

[yurbud]

26. I thought that was tongue in cheek. It's one thing to say Iraqis might have been better off under

Saddam, but that's not the same as saying he should be brought back. He would make his little killing spree after the first Gulf War look like a slap fight.

[IndianaGreen]

29. The US called for a Shia uprising at the end of the Gulf War

then, like it did in Hungary in 1956, it didn't lift a finger to help the Shia. Why? The realist in Bush 41 Administration knew back then that any Shia government in Iraq would quickly fall under the control of Iran.

There is a joke that says that the reason we knew Saddam had WMD was because we had the invoices!

[yurbud]

30. Bush: "I know cuz my daddy's got the reseats."

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. At least Maliki's got balls

or maybe he's just plain stupid, to go out in public in Sadr City.

[yurbud]

5. I don't envy that guy. He pleases Bush too much, his own people will kill him. If he sides with

his people too much, Bush will kill him.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. It's all going swimmingly..

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, center, visits Sadr City, a Shiite area in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2006, two days after series of explosions killed more than 200 residents. Al-Maliki is facing opposition from both sides as he works to halt his nation's slide into an all-out civil war, but the White House said Saturday that despite threats from Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders, he is not expected to cancel his trip to Amman, Jordan, to meet President Bush on Wednesday and Thursday.







Smoke rises from the site of an explosion east of Baghdad. Explosions have echoed around the Iraqi capital with fearful civilians keeping off the streets on the third day of a curfew imposed to rein in bloodletting that has killed hundreds.




Suspected insurgents are brought to the Iraqi military base in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2006. At least 11 suspected militants were killed in Baqouba, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity as Iraqi security forces often do in an area subjected to widespread fighting and revenge killings.

Is this any way to transport prisoners? Why do I have a sick feeling, looking at that picture, that these guys could end up being found "tortured and killed" in a few days? :scared: :cry:

MKJ

[yurbud]

6. great pic of McCain and Bush & quote. But is hugging Bush torture or masochism?

or just helping him get over the loss of Jeff Gannon?

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

20. Is it torture if McCain seeks it out? I know having my face buried near gwb's armpit would be

a most cruel punishment! MKJ

[yurbud]

4. Possible reason he looks like a puppet: Bush vetoed people's choice for PM (article & link)

Remember the guy who read Chomsky that the Iraqis picked to be PM?

Bush vetoed him and told his party to pick someone else.

Maybe someone needs to put together a timeline of these quickly forgotten incidents that shows Bush's real commitment to democracy.

Bush's Call for Ouster of Iraq's Prime Minister Widens Rift with Shias

By PATRICK COCKBURN
in Arbil, Iraq.

President George W Bush has made it clear that he does not want Ibrahim al-Jaafari to remain prime minister of Iraq in a move likely to increase hostility between the US and the Shia community.

Mr Bush has written to the Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shi'ite Alliance asking him to nominate somebody else for the post. " The Americans are very firm about this," said a senior official. "They don't want Jaafari at any price."

Friction between the Americans and the Shia, who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's 27 million population, escalated sharply after at least 16 Shi'ites were killed in the al-Mustafa mosque by Iraqi and American Special Forces on Sunday night. Many Shia believe that the US was shocked by, and is not ready to accept, the success of the Shia Alliance in the election on December 15.

The prolonged negotiations on forming a new national unity government has served to underline the fissures dividing Shia, Sunni and Kurds. The Alliance has called for security to be handed over to the Iraqi government in the wake of the al-Mustafa incident.


FULL TEXT:
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick03292006.html

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

8. How quickly we forget. How quickly this puppet has lost his power.

If, in fact, he ever had any to begin with.

MKJ

[ECH1969]

9. Ibrahim al-Jaafari was a weaker PM then Maliki

Did you pay any attention whatsoever during his year as PM?

[yurbud]

11. that must have been why Bush didn't like him--he HATES weak underlings who are just yes men...

Condi
Gonzales
Chertoff
Congressional Republicans


No, those are all strong people who aren't afraid to contradict Bush when it's in the interest of the people. I'm sure he wants that same independence in an Iraqi PM, one who wouldn't be afraid to stand up for Iraqis getting a fair share of their oil income for instance.

[ECH1969]

14. You don't seem to remember Jaafari

Its not that he was a yes man or a no man during his time as PM.

It was that he couldn't make a deicison one way or the other so he would think about a decision and debate the decision and at the end of the day he would make no decision.

[yurbud]

17. according to whose timetable?

[Barrett808]

10. Thanks for pulling that out of the Memory Hole. n/t

[cui bono]

22. A timeline would be great. I've lost track of what elected officials

have been replaced with Bush cronies.

Edit: I figured Think Progress would have one...
http://thinkprogress.org/iraq-timeline

[pissedoffprogressive]

7. Oh Yes. They like us there - NOT

[smoogatz]

13. Is it chaos yet?

What's the mission there, again?

[mc jazz]

15. He looks like a puppet

I have listen to Malaki and his ideas have a logic, a sense that on paper seem good but he looks all wrong. He looks shabby don't you think? They need someone with charisma who at least appears to have authority, FFS Saddam in court projected acres more authority than Maliki does
Does anyone have the picture of him meeting Ahmadinijad? It says it all

[LeftistGorilla]

16. dude will be dead....

within the next couple of years...

[saigon68]

19. HE'S THE "CHARLIE McKARZAI" of Iraq-Nam

[yurbud]

27. just plug Karzai, Maliki, whoever else Bush picks to run anything...

there's nothing like an mean incompetent tard who also micromanages and only hires yes men.

[daleo]

21. I guess Iraqis ran out of flowers to throw

So rocks will have to do.

[JoMama49]

25. Okay, now I see why * is not meeting the PM in the Green Zone!

[Little Wing]

28. Stoning? How Christian of them