Harper’s reports:
“Returning from a three-day trip to Iraq and Jordan, Senate Chairman of the Armed Services Carl Levin (D., Mich.) declared the Iraqi government ‘non-functional’ and recommended that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his cabinet be replaced. ‘We care for our people and our constitution,’ said Maliki, who was visiting Syria, ‘and can find friends elsewhere.’ The US Justice Department released documents showing that Dr. Ayad Allawi, Maliki’s chief opponent and the man most likely to replace him as prime minister, is paying the G.O.P. firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers US$300,000 to lobby on his behalf.”
Pssst...Senator...the Prime Minister of Iraq was elected...elected, remember? You can’t replace him without holding another sham election.
And what’s this? Looking through the headlines, we notice that America is really trying to flex some muscle where Iran is involved. Dave Gonigam, writing for the DR blog explains:
“We begin with what could have been an extremely close call – a raid at the Baghdad Sheraton, during which US forces arrested eight people from the Iranian Electricity Ministry who were in town to negotiate a deal with the Iraqi government. They were later released, found to have done nothing wrong, but only after the intervention of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki (who says he’s an ineffective doofus?).
“But before it was all over, the eight men were bound and blindfolded, and trotted before TV cameras – which struck me as about as provocative a move as Washington could ever orchestrate. Well, maybe it wasn’t orchestrated, it might well have been an accident, but to give those guys the same treatment as the US embassy hostages in Tehran in 1979 sure seems like rubbing the mullahs’ face in it.
“So that’s one provocation that hasn’t panned out. But there are always presidential speeches. And George W. Bush delivered a doozy yesterday to the American Legion...”
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Best-selling investment author Bill Bonner is the founder and president of Agora Publishing, one of the world's most successful consumer newsletter companies. Owner of both Fleet Street Publications and MoneyWeek magazine in the UK, he is also author of the free daily e-mail The Daily Reckoning.
Comment by Coffee Addict on 31 August 2007:
Bill
The only person who can hold Iraq together is Muqtada al-Sadr. This is because he has credibility in both Shi’a and Sunni camps. He is not a nice guy. He is aligned with Iran in many ways but is also a staunch nationalist is nobody's puppet.
My guess is that if the US and its allies left Iraq, a power vaccuum would emerge allowing al-Sadr to fill the gap.
Carl Levin is correct but he would be wrong to think that the US can simply appoint a successor to al-Maliki.
Should Al-Sadr (hypothetically) take over at some stage, US and it allies will be spared the continued cost of an unwinnable conflict, war profiteers will lose their income, the killing will stop and al-Qaeda will be booted out along with other foreign combatants. The Bush camp know this and perhaps this is why CIA editors have allowed the Wiki entry on al-Sadr to remain reasonably balanced.
What the neocons (including Bush) can’t tolerate is the mutuality between the al-Sadr camp and Iran.
My thinking is that a Democrat Government will be more pragmatic in the way it would put national, economic and humanitarian interests before ideological dogma (or the theocracy of capitalism as it is sometimes referred to this site).
The economic outome of such a political shift in Iraq would of course be mixed but with plug in cars and other hybrid vehicles on the drawing boards I am with the necons in hoping that reliance on Middle East oil can be significantly reduced.
Comment by zog on 1 September 2007:
I wonder if Maliki has read about the US treatment of the elected president of South Vietnam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem
worthwhile reading for him about how he may be treated now that Bush has invoked the Vietnam comparison