Iraq: Game Over- The last hope for peace in Iraq was stomped to death

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Iraq: Game Over
Robert Dreyfuss
December 22, 2005

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051222/iraq_game_over.php

>>>>The victory of the Shiite religious coalition in the December 15 election hands power for the next four years to a fanatical band of fundamentalist Shiite parties backed by Iran, above all to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Quietly backed by His Malevolence, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sustained by a 20,000-strong paramilitary force called the Badr Brigade, and with both overt and covert support from Iran's intelligence service and its Revolutionary Guard corps, SCIRI will create a theocratic bastion state in its southern Iraqi fiefdom and use its power in Baghdad to rule what's left of the Iraqi state by force.


>>>>There isn't any point in looking for silver linings in the catastrophic Iraqi vote. The likely next prime minister, Adel Abdel Mahdi, is a smooth-talking SCIRI thug. His boss, Abdel Aziz Hakim of SCIRI, is the former commander of the Badr Brigade and a militant cleric who has issued bloodthirsty calls for a no-holds-barred military solution to the insurgency. The scores of secret torture prisons by the SCIRI-led Iraqi ministry of the interior will proliferate, and SCIRI-led death squads will start going down their lists of targets. The divisive, sectarian constitution that was rammed down Iraq's throat in October by the Shiite religious bloc will be preserved intact under the new, "permanent government" of Iraq led by SCIRI.


>>>>The Sunnis are already charging vote fraud, threatening to boycott or withdraw from the new assembly, and openly predicting that Iraq will now slide into civil war. There is virtually no combination of political alliances now that can guarantee Sunnis a fair share of power in the new Iraq. Every Sunni leader, from the most militant Baath Party activist to the most conservative Sunni clergyman, knows that a regime led by Hakim's SCIRI bloc will mean war. As a result, proponents of cooperating with the new government will become fence-sitters, and fence-sitters will join the resistance. The insurgency will continue, and possibly strengthen.

>>>> . . . it also means that every day that the U.S. forces remain in Iraq, the United States creates another day for the Shiite religious forces to strengthen their hand, to build their militia, and to make plans for cleansing Sunnis from majority Shiite areas. (It is, of course, with the help of the U.S. army that the Shiite militias are being incorporated into the new Iraqi army, unit by unit.) By getting out of Iraq as soon as possible, Jack Murtha-style, the United States can at the very least ensure that the Shiites do not grow all-powerful, and it might prevent a further radicalization of the Sunni-led resistance. When there are no good options, then prudence suggests that it's time to choose the least bad one."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051222/iraq_game_over.php

[Kagemusha]

1. To be blunt Sistani is a scholar not a thug. Not that it matters

I just think that calling Sistani "His Malevolence" is an unnecessary slur against the current sitting supreme religious leader of the Shiite faith. Religious, not political.

Hakim will still be able to run things into the ground just fine, and that's what matters to the rest of us.

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2. fair enough. folks get passionate about this. Sistani has played may sides

I say blah. I have very little respect for folks in government who dictate down to their 'followers'. Is this a government, a democracy, or is it a church?

[Kagemusha]

3. d) all of the above

And none the better for it.