troung

Iraq prime minister mum on Bush plans
By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq -President Bush called a crackdown on Shiite militias critical to success in Iraq, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been noticeably silent — perhaps because Bush's plan would mean attacks on the Shiite radicals who have helped his Shiite coalition expand its political dominance.
In announcing a new Iraq policy Wednesday night, Bush said earlier efforts to tame the sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad had been snarled by "political and sectarian interference (that) prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence.
It's the third time since May that a joint U.S.-Iraqi program to calm the capital has been announced.
"This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods," Bush said. "Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated."
However, al-Maliki, a devout Shiite, hasn't said anything nearly so straightforward, at least in public. He's issued instead vague assurances that anyone illegally carrying weapons would be dealt with harshly.
Announcing his vision of the new security plan last Saturday, al-Maliki said he would fight against "safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of (their) sectarian or political affiliation."
He has been saying that to Iraqis for months — including in October when he ordered U.S. forces in October to stop all attacks on Sadr City, headquarters of the Mahdi Army, a violent Shiite militia headed by his key political backer, radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Maliki instead has encouraged the Americans to go after rival Sunni insurgents, especially in the territory west of Baghdad where few Shiites live.
Experts say that even if al-Maliki's assures Bush of support, his behavior illustrates that he's not as Bush described, a man whose primary concern is bringing peace and prosperity to his country.
"The Bush administration has one view of Iraqi reality in which Maliki is...an honest broker," said W. Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "In my view, Maliki is one of any number of Shiite Arab activists who are seeking to consolidate Shiite control."
The radical Shiites already were predicting Bush's plan was doomed.
"We reject Bush's new strategy and we think it will fail," said Abdul-Razzaq al-Nidawi, a senior official in al-Sadr's office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
"We call upon the American people to oppose sending more of their sons to Iraq so that they will not be flown back in coffins," he said.
Al-Maliki, who first outlined a new Iraqi-led security plan to Bush when they met in Amman, Jordan, in November, has never sought an increased U.S. military footprint in Iraq. He has argued for the Americans increasingly to pull out of the cities and leave security to the Iraqi Army, which is 80 percent Shiite. The Americans would respond only when needed.
An Iraqi general told The Associated Press earlier this week that the army intended to put 9 brigades on the streets of Baghdad, or a total of about 27,000 men.
The force would be commanded by a Shiite, Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, who was taken prisoner of war by U.S. forces during the 1991 Gulf war and will report directly to al-Maliki.
The military officer, who spoke anonymously because the information was not yet public, said for the most part the Iraqi force would not be directed against the Shiite militias. The majority of fighting against the Mahdi Army in Sadr city would be left to the Americans in tandem with the Iraqi Special Operations Command, which is made up of many non-Arab Kurds as well as Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

Muqtedar Khan, a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said he suspects the Iraqi leader is simply trying to placate the Americans, whom, it seems, he can't live with or without.
"This is the kind of game most global politicians are born with," said Khan, who is also a professor of Islam and global studies at the University of Delaware. "It's called managing Washington."
Al-Maliki is in a tight spot, he said, caught between his radical Shiite supporters and his American backers, who help finance and protect his fractious government. Khan sees a way out, but he's not hopeful al-Maliki can pull it off.
"If Maliki can send a message that he is for the Iraqi people and that's he tough," he may survive, Khan said, explaining that the prime minister needs to find a way to convincingly tell ordinary Iraqis that, "I'm tough on Sadr. I'm tough on Bush."
But Lang thinks that if al-Maliki allows U.S. troops to clear Shiite areas of militias, his "position will become more and more impossible, and his government will fall."
And Naim al-Kaabi, Baghdad's deputy mayor and a senior member of al-Sadr's political organization, declared support for the Bush plan to attack Sunni insurgents but not the Mahdi Army, which he claimed was not a militia.
"It is an ideological group whose aim is to protect religious leaders, holy shrines and civilians. If the government can guarantee security the Mahdi Army will dissolve," al-Kaabi said.
The militia is widely held responsible, often with the blessing of Iraqi authorities, of cleansing mixed neighborhoods of their Sunni minorities as the Mahdi Army has expanded its hold deep into west Baghdad Sunni enclaves.
Al-Maliki aides have suggested the prime minister will attempt to avoid an all-out attack on the militia by attempting first to focus the new security drive on Sunni insurgent-held regions of the capital. If that were to prove successful, the theory goes, al-Maliki could then go the Mahdi Army and demand it disband because Shiites were no longer under threat.
Regardless, some Mahdi Army leaders in Sadr City said Friday that they "expect a strike soon."
The fighters, who would not give their names because their activities are secret, said they were being cautious about moving about Sadr City and have taken pains not to appear in the streets with weapons. "We don't know how the strike will be carried out or when," one of the fighters said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070112/...ea/iraq_maliki

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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

Ray

Well, one thing good that will emerge out of Bush's new strategy and that is Malliki will not be allowed to run a riot!

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

highsea

You will know when things start blowing up around you, a$$hole.

__________________
My baby called me up. She said- Why don't you ever take me out? Pick me up in your brand new car....You shake the short change from the old fruit jar...

Shek

Los Angeles Times
January 13, 2007
Pg. 1

Iraqi Leader Goes Own Way To Fill Top Post

He picks an unknown to lead forces in Baghdad, which raises questions about his motives.

By Louise Roug and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen over the objections of U.S. and Iraqi military commanders, officials from both governments said.

Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar.

The appointment is highly significant because it is Maliki's first public move after President Bush's announcement that he was sending more troops to Iraq. The prime mission of those troops is to reduce violence in Baghdad, much of which is blamed on sectarian fighters.

As the Iraqi commander for the capital, Qanbar would play a central role in that campaign, and any ties he might have to sectarian groups could undermine the new U.S. effort.

In his speech Wednesday, in which he announced the troop increase, Bush said political and sectarian interference in security matters would no longer be tolerated.

"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people," Bush said. "The prime minister understands this."

Maliki's decision to push through his own choice for one of the country's most sensitive military posts — and to reject another officer who was considered more qualified by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey — has renewed questions about the prime minister's intentions.

"It's a delicate situation," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who questioned the choice of Qanbar. "It's very dangerous if it turns out that he has affiliations," he said, naming Maliki's political party and the anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr.

U.S. officials are skeptical of Qanbar not only because of the way he was named, but because they know little about him. Moreover, they have questioned the degree to which Maliki's government is reliant on sectarian figures, particularly Sadr. Maliki essentially is asking American officials to take Qanbar on trust at a time when they have little left.

Qanbar, a commander in the navy during Saddam Hussein's reign, has not worked with American military officials, who say they know little about him other than that he hails from Amarah, a city in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, and that he was taken prisoner by American forces near Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

U.S. commanders have said that officials in Maliki's government have intervened several times to block them from combating Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which is accused of being behind much of the bloodshed in Baghdad. When U.S. forces did raid the militia's stronghold of Sadr City, a largely Shiite neighborhood of east Baghdad, Maliki's government publicly criticized them. On several occasions, Maliki ordered the release of suspected militiamen captured there, frustrating U.S. commanders.

The appointment of Qanbar comes as the U.S. military is debating whether to attack Sadr City. As the Iraqi commander, Qanbar could have advance knowledge of U.S. operations. He would command 18 brigades of Iraqi forces that are supposed to be deployed to work with the Americans.

U.S. officials have said the decision on whether to move into Sadr City will be left to the Iraqi government. Privately, senior military officials say that new rules of engagement negotiated with the Iraqis would allow them to go into the neighborhood and target individual insurgent and militia leaders.

At least some Pentagon planners appear to relish the opportunity to target the Al Mahdi militia.

"This time we have a commitment from Maliki and other key players in the Iraqi government … to have a no-holds-barred arrangement for neighborhoods in Baghdad," said a senior military official who requested anonymity in order to freely discuss military planning. Sadr City "will not be a safe haven" for militias, he said.

Within the Pentagon, not everyone agrees that attacking Sadr City is advisable.

Crucial to the decision will be the incoming U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus. He has not commented on the tactics he plans to pursue, but for the last two years he has overseen the development of the military's new counterinsurgency field manual, which appears to argue against a large-scale invasion of a neighborhood such as Sadr City, particularly in the early part of the new Baghdad security campaign.

The manual's first chapter, which Petraeus is known to have aggressively rewritten, advises commanders that though largescale offensives against insurgents may be necessary, they should be limited.

"Killing every insurgent is normally impossible," the manual says. "Attempting to do so can be counterproductive in some cases; it risks generating popular resentment, creating martyrs that motivate new recruits, and producing cycles of revenge."

An influential plan for Baghdad security drawn up by retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and military analyst Frederick Kagan strongly advised against moving into Sadr City. The plan, which was highly influential within the White House and is considered to mirror Petraeus' thinking, argued that an attack on Sadr City would unite now-splintered Shiite factions against U.S. forces.

"We have an opportunity now to keep the Shiite parties separate and to avoid a full-scale military conflict with them," Kagan said. "If we go into Sadr City, that will not be the case. We will find ourselves in a full-scale, very bloody operation, which probably will look something like Fallouja."

There is even more division over whether to target Sadr himself.

Senior military officials refused to discuss which insurgents and militia commanders might be in the crosshairs. They have been vague about whether Sadr could be detained or killed.

"The people we target are not fundamentally political leaders," said the senior military official. "We're targeting people who are directly involved with promoting violence either against our Iraqi partners or, in some instances, against us."

To quell the concerns U.S. commanders have about Qanbar, American officials and the Iraqi government have agreed on a complicated system in which another layer would be added to the command structure between Maliki and Qanbar. That layer would include the top U.S. commander, a high-ranking American official said.

But that decision did not appease Iraqi politicians who object that they were not consulted on Qanbar's appointment.

"Nobody asked us," said Adnan Dulaimi, a lawmaker with a main Sunni bloc. "This is the first I've heard."

Times staff writer Raheem Salman contributed to this report.

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"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Ray

Highseas.

Unfortunately, they are impervious of things blowing up around them and in the bargain dying like flies.

Therefore, while one feels it will have some effect, it has none. They come in like lemmings!

Mark my word, Malikki will bring in greater doom!

The Iraq situation should be solved soon, but I see no light at the end of the tunnel!

S-2

"'The Bush administration has one view of Iraqi reality in which Maliki is ... an honest broker,' said W. Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. 'In my view, Maliki is one of any number of Shiite Arab activists who are seeking to consolidate Shiite control.'"

Steve Hurst, AP Bureau Chief for Baghdad threw in his $.02 worth in a confusing analysis that quite likely reflects the ground speculation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011201720.html

Further along, an alternate, less strident view is represented-

"'This is the kind of game most global politicians are born with,' said Khan, who is also a professor of Islam and global studies at the University of Delaware. 'It's called managing Washington.'"

Khan suggests that al Maliki's dilemma is nothing more than balancing Washington with the Iraqi street. No ideological agenda, just a politician trying to keep his government in power...but needing the votes of a highly ideological bloc of shia parliamentarians.

"And Naim al-Kaabi, Baghdad's deputy mayor and a senior member of al-Sadr's political organization, declared support for the Bush plan to attack Sunni insurgents but not the Mahdi Army, which he claimed was not a militia.

'It is an ideological group whose aim is to protect religious leaders, holy shrines and civilians. If the government can guarantee security, the Mahdi Army will dissolve,' al-Kaabi said."

To this end, Hurst reports the following-

"Al-Maliki aides have suggested the prime minister will attempt to avoid an all-out attack on the militia by attempting first to focus the new security drive on Sunni insurgent-held regions of the capital. If that were to prove successful, the theory goes, al-Maliki could then go the Mahdi Army and demand it disband because Shiites were no longer under threat."

I'd suggest that AQI would find a way to convince Mahdi forces that Shiites ARE under threat, and will remain so. It is fundamental to their strategy, confirmed by the Samarra Mosque bombing. So long as AQI is in Iraq, they'll do everything to foment sectarianism on both sides. Wishful thinking on America's part to believe the above nonsense in light of the already harsh lessons that we've received.

Finally, it seems unusual that this latest offensive by the Iraqi Army will be led by a commander NOT selected by the Iraqi Army High Command nor endorsed by U.S. ground force commanders. Further, his chain of command evidently by-passes the Iraqi Army.

Ray

[quote=S-2;328058]Mallikki is NO honest broker. He is a Dawaa party hack answerable to the madhatter Al Sadr!



Malikki has no dilemma. He is clear in his ideas and will implement the Daawa's agenda, Bush in delusional tow!

An example of soft soaping Bush to join in the Sunni eradication!

The Mahdis are the Army!

Spot on! Dawaa plans in full speed ahead!

Wishful thinking indeed! Must understand the Islamists!

Nothing unusual.

Iraqis are the boss.

Chaos is their agenda!

Blasted idiots and worse, Bush is being fooled!

Lahori paa jee

US needs to follow Iraq study groups recommendation in order to succed in Iraq. They cannot win without engaging Iran and Syria. Shias would only obey Iran and Mouqtada. Or get rid of Mouqatada

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Nisaar main teri galiyon pe aaye watan, ke jahan
Chali hai rasm keh koi na sar utha keh chaley

dalem

Right. "Engage" with nations that are working for goals 180 degrees opposed to ours. Makes perfect sense.

-dale

Lahori paa jee

Which goals are you talking about. The goals which even your president has no idea of. Thats not what im saying its your own leaders and army officers are saying

Ray

Dalem,

Why talk about other countries?

The Iraqi govt itself is working against the US interests!

This Iraqi govt disappoints me.

The US is laying down all its troops and prestige for them and they are hellbent in destroying all the effort!

astralis

hahahaha this type of talk makes me want to laugh and cry. maliki just out-bushed bush.

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WP: Maliki stresses need to bolster forces - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

Maliki stresses need to bolster Iraqi forces
Need for U.S. forces could drop ‘dramatically,’ Iraqi prime minister says

By Joshua Partlow
Updated: 10:06 a.m. ET Jan 18, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 17 - The Iraqi government's need for American troops would "dramatically go down" in three to six months if the United States accelerated the process of equipping and arming Iraq's security forces, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Wednesday.

The head of Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government defended his country's independence and sovereignty and called on U.S. leaders to show faith in his ability to lead.

Maliki disputed President Bush's remarks broadcast Tuesday that the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein "looked like it was kind of a revenge killing" and took exception to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's Senate testimony last week that Maliki's administration was on "borrowed time."

The prime minister said statements such as Rice's "give morale boosts for the terrorists and push them toward making an extra effort and making them believe they have defeated the American administration," Maliki said. "But I can tell you that they have not defeated the Iraqi government."

Speaking through an interpreter to a group of reporters for an hour in his offices in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, Maliki found several ways to say that Iraq is beholden to no country. He defended Iraq's constitutional right to the death penalty, its commitment to dialogue with Iran and Syria despite U.S. opposition to those governments, and its determination to use Iraqi troops to lead the latest effort to pacify Baghdad.

At a time when Bush has committed an additional 21,500 troops to the fight in Iraq, Maliki went further than he has before in establishing a time frame for drawing down the U.S. presence.

"If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down. That's on the condition that there are real strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping them and arming them," Maliki said.

In a statement issued by Maliki's office Tuesday, he said Iraq would continue to build up its armed forces "so it will be possible to withdraw the Multinational forces from cities, or withdraw 50,000 soldiers from Iraq."

Deep skepticism
Maliki faces deep skepticism in Iraq and abroad about whether he has the political will or ability to steer his country away from civil war, or even to keep his position as prime minister. His comments amounted to a defense of the viability of his government, which he pledged to lead "until I achieve the peace and prosperity that Iraq deserves."

In an interview conducted Dec. 24, Maliki sounded less committed to his office. "I wish I could be done with it before the end" of his four-year term, he told the Wall Street Journal. "I would like to serve my people from outside the circle of senior officials, maybe through parliament."

In the interview Wednesday, Maliki said many American and Iraqi lives would have been spared if the Iraqi forces were better equipped. But he did not elaborate on what he wanted in terms of weapons or materiel, or if his needs exceeded what is proposed in the $1.5 billion military sales agreement Iraq reached with the U.S. last month. Under that deal, the Iraqi government will receive an additional 300 armored personnel carriers, 600 more "up-armored" Humvees, helicopters and other equipment over the course of this year, according to Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. Iraq's proposed 2007 budget devotes $7 billion to building up the armed forces.

"President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki agreed in November to accelerate not only the training of the Iraqi security forces but also accelerate the transfer of equipment," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Wednesday.

One Maliki aide said the prime minister wants "heavier weapons" and is concerned that Iraqi security forces are outgunned by militias and insurgents.

"Basically the level of weapons in the current army is really a disgrace," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. In many cases, gunmen are "definitely better armed" than the police and the army, the aide said.

Bush administration officials have long expressed concern in private about delivering military equipment to Iraq because of uncertainty that it would be kept out of the hands of militiamen, common criminals and insurgents.

The prime minister's critics in Iraq and Washington say he is unable to target the Shiite militias run by his political allies, but on Wednesday he reiterated his commitment to defeating militants of any sect. Over the past few days, he said, his government had arrested 400 members of the Mahdi Army, the burgeoning Shiite militia led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a political supporter of Maliki, and staged a mission in the Shiite holy city of Karbala targeting people who attempted to assassinate a member of the provincial council. He said he has prohibited the Iraqi security forces from openly paying homage to sectarian leaders, such as Sadr, or from joining political parties.

"There will not be any house or party headquarters or any office that has impunity from security operations," he said.

A Sadr spokesman, Abdul Razak al-Nadawi, denied that 400 Mahdi Army members had been arrested and said he was unaware of an operation in Karbala.

Maliki addressed at length Bush's recent critical comments about Hussein's hanging, in which attendees shouted Sadr's name and told Hussein to "go to hell" while he stood at the gallows.

The execution, Maliki said, followed a legitimate trial and conviction -- for Hussein's role in the killing of 148 men and boys from a Shiite village in the 1980s -- and Hussein "was not subjected to any act of revenge, any physical attack, and it was a judicial process that ended with him being sentenced to death according to Iraqi law."

‘Media pressure’
"I know President Bush and I know him as a strong person that does not get affected by the media pressure, but it seems the pressure has gone to a great extent that led to the president giving this statement," Maliki said.

Maliki spoke slowly and seriously for most of the conversation, but occasionally broke into a smile, such as when he was asked whether Bush needs him more than he needs Bush. "This is an evil question," he said, laughing.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who was traveling with Rice in Europe on Wednesday, defended the secretary's comment about the Maliki administration. "It was a restatement of what others have said, including the president, underscoring the importance and urgency of the Iraqi government acting on behalf of the Iraqi people," he said.

A convoy carrying members of a U.S. democracy group was ambushed Wednesday in Baghdad, and four of the workers, including an American woman, were killed, an official with the group told the Associated Press.

Gunmen attacked the three-car convoy belonging to the National Democratic Institute, said Les Campbell, the group's Middle East director. Besides the American, a Hungarian, a Croatian and an Iraqi were killed, he said.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, a truck laden with explosives blew up outside a police station, killing 10 people, including four policemen, and wounding 45 others, according to the Kirkuk police chief. The blast damaged houses and destroyed cars, collapsed a mosque and took down a cellphone tower. There is growing conflict between ethnic Kurds and Turkmens in the city and the police station was located in a predominantly Turkmen area.

Later in the day, a second car bomb exploded in Kirkuk outside a Kurdish political office.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a suicide attack near a busy restaurant in a market in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The blast killed 20 people and wounded 23 others, according to Brig. Gen. Abdullah Sami of the Interior Ministry.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington, staff writer Glenn Kessler traveling with Rice, and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations