Ol'GrandbagBush
2011-12-19 15:20:36 UTC
"Gee! I never expected this!"
-- George W. Bush
American War Criminal Emeritus *
___________
* In Texas, home In blissful retirement, like Dick Cheney. With no
worries about being arrested and tried by a foreign tribunal for
crimes against humanity. Kinda like Sudan's Omar al-Bashir!
http://www.heybushie.com
====================
"Iraq political crisis erupts as last U.S. troops leave"
By Liz Sly
December 18, 2011
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political process was unraveling faster than had been
anticipated Saturday, with Sunni politicians walking out of the
nation’s parliament and threatening to resign from the government even
before the last U.S. troops had left the country.
The crisis was triggered by reports that security forces loyal to
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, are planning to arrest the
country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and charge him with
terrorism.
Those reports have fueled fears among Sunni politicians that Maliki
intends to further consolidate his grip on power by moving against his
rivals now that U.S. troops have gone. In recent days, the homes of
top Sunni politicians in the fortified Green Zone have been ringed by
tanks and armored personnel carriers, and rumors are flying that
arrest warrants will be issued for other Sunni leaders.
The mostly Sunni Iraqiya bloc said it had withdrawn from parliament to
protest what it called Maliki’s increasingly dictatorial behavior.
Sunni ministers in the coalition government will resign unless he
gives them a greater say in running the government and, in particular,
overseeing the country’s Shiite-dominated security forces, the bloc
warned.
Maliki loyalists accused the Sunnis of trying to forestall the
detention of Hashimi, who, they say, has been definitively tied to
acts of terrorism.
“His office is in charge of the funding and planning of terrorist
attacks in Baghdad and other places,” said Hussein al-Asadi, a
lawmaker with Maliki’s bloc. “The judicial authority has issued arrest
warrants against those who are involved.”
Iraqiya leaders linked their walkout directly to the timing of the
American withdrawal, which, they said, had left Maliki’s rivals
vulnerable to the predations of an army and police force that the
Shiite prime minister has increasingly brought under his personal
control over the past year.
The U.S. military formally declared the Iraq war over at a ceremony
outside Baghdad on Thursday, and the last few hundred soldiers crossed
the border into Kuwait early Sunday morning.
“We think there are new indications of a new attempt to create a
dictatorship,” said Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq. “We are
really worried that the country is being led into chaos and division
and the possibility of civil war is there.”
A brewing confrontation in the province of Diyala underscored the risk
that violence could erupt. After the mostly Sunni leadership of the
province declared last week that it intends to seek regional autonomy
under the terms of Iraq’s constitution, Shiite militiamen surrounded
the provincial council headquarters and set fire to the Sunni
governor’s home.
The governor and most members of the provincial council have fled to
northern Kurdistan, and on Saturday, the main highway linking Baghdad
to the northern city of Kirkuk was blocked for a third day by Shiite
militiamen who, residents said, belong to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi
Army.
The crisis marks the most serious breakdown yet of the consensus
forged a year ago between the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political
blocs that enabled the creation of the current coalition government.
For the first time, the Sunni Iraqiya bloc, which won the largest
number of votes in last year’s election, was given meaningful
positions in the government.
But tensions have been building for months between the factions over
Maliki’s failure to include Sunnis in the decision-making process and
his steady consolidation of personal control over the security forces.
He has retained the positions of defense and interior ministers for
himself, and used the de-Baathification laws drawn up by the American
occupation authority in 2003 to replace thousands of Sunni officers as
well as independent Shiites with his own loyalists.
The detentions in October of hundreds of suspected sympathizers of
Saddam Hussein’s former Baath Party, many of them Sunni, have fueled a
push for regional autonomy by the mostly Sunni provinces to the north
and west of Baghdad, which Maliki has vowed to resist.
Sunnis in the provinces say they fear persecution both by the Shiite
government and Sunni extremists now that U.S. troops are no longer
present.
Gen. Khaled al-Dulaimi, who helped U.S. forces establish the Anbar
Police Academy in 2007, was stripped of his post last month as U.S.
troops were pulling out of the western province. He predicted that
many other officers will be sidelined now that U.S. troops have gone.
The U.S. military built the Anbar security forces almost from scratch
after the Sunni Awakening movement in 2007 succeeded in defeating the
al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgency.
And those who collaborated with the Americans are also at risk of
being targeted by the remnants of the Sunni al-Qaeda fighters, who
have been systematically pursuing those who turned against them. Now
that he has been stripped of the security that came with his position,
Dulaimi said, “I might be assassinated by terrorists at any time.” He
added, “Who is going to protect me?”
[Special correspondents Asaad Majeed and Aziz Alwan contributed to
this report.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraq-political-crisis-erupts-as-last-us-troops-leave/2011/12/17/gIQA3aor0O_story.html
-- George W. Bush
American War Criminal Emeritus *
___________
* In Texas, home In blissful retirement, like Dick Cheney. With no
worries about being arrested and tried by a foreign tribunal for
crimes against humanity. Kinda like Sudan's Omar al-Bashir!
http://www.heybushie.com
====================
"Iraq political crisis erupts as last U.S. troops leave"
By Liz Sly
December 18, 2011
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political process was unraveling faster than had been
anticipated Saturday, with Sunni politicians walking out of the
nation’s parliament and threatening to resign from the government even
before the last U.S. troops had left the country.
The crisis was triggered by reports that security forces loyal to
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, are planning to arrest the
country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and charge him with
terrorism.
Those reports have fueled fears among Sunni politicians that Maliki
intends to further consolidate his grip on power by moving against his
rivals now that U.S. troops have gone. In recent days, the homes of
top Sunni politicians in the fortified Green Zone have been ringed by
tanks and armored personnel carriers, and rumors are flying that
arrest warrants will be issued for other Sunni leaders.
The mostly Sunni Iraqiya bloc said it had withdrawn from parliament to
protest what it called Maliki’s increasingly dictatorial behavior.
Sunni ministers in the coalition government will resign unless he
gives them a greater say in running the government and, in particular,
overseeing the country’s Shiite-dominated security forces, the bloc
warned.
Maliki loyalists accused the Sunnis of trying to forestall the
detention of Hashimi, who, they say, has been definitively tied to
acts of terrorism.
“His office is in charge of the funding and planning of terrorist
attacks in Baghdad and other places,” said Hussein al-Asadi, a
lawmaker with Maliki’s bloc. “The judicial authority has issued arrest
warrants against those who are involved.”
Iraqiya leaders linked their walkout directly to the timing of the
American withdrawal, which, they said, had left Maliki’s rivals
vulnerable to the predations of an army and police force that the
Shiite prime minister has increasingly brought under his personal
control over the past year.
The U.S. military formally declared the Iraq war over at a ceremony
outside Baghdad on Thursday, and the last few hundred soldiers crossed
the border into Kuwait early Sunday morning.
“We think there are new indications of a new attempt to create a
dictatorship,” said Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq. “We are
really worried that the country is being led into chaos and division
and the possibility of civil war is there.”
A brewing confrontation in the province of Diyala underscored the risk
that violence could erupt. After the mostly Sunni leadership of the
province declared last week that it intends to seek regional autonomy
under the terms of Iraq’s constitution, Shiite militiamen surrounded
the provincial council headquarters and set fire to the Sunni
governor’s home.
The governor and most members of the provincial council have fled to
northern Kurdistan, and on Saturday, the main highway linking Baghdad
to the northern city of Kirkuk was blocked for a third day by Shiite
militiamen who, residents said, belong to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi
Army.
The crisis marks the most serious breakdown yet of the consensus
forged a year ago between the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political
blocs that enabled the creation of the current coalition government.
For the first time, the Sunni Iraqiya bloc, which won the largest
number of votes in last year’s election, was given meaningful
positions in the government.
But tensions have been building for months between the factions over
Maliki’s failure to include Sunnis in the decision-making process and
his steady consolidation of personal control over the security forces.
He has retained the positions of defense and interior ministers for
himself, and used the de-Baathification laws drawn up by the American
occupation authority in 2003 to replace thousands of Sunni officers as
well as independent Shiites with his own loyalists.
The detentions in October of hundreds of suspected sympathizers of
Saddam Hussein’s former Baath Party, many of them Sunni, have fueled a
push for regional autonomy by the mostly Sunni provinces to the north
and west of Baghdad, which Maliki has vowed to resist.
Sunnis in the provinces say they fear persecution both by the Shiite
government and Sunni extremists now that U.S. troops are no longer
present.
Gen. Khaled al-Dulaimi, who helped U.S. forces establish the Anbar
Police Academy in 2007, was stripped of his post last month as U.S.
troops were pulling out of the western province. He predicted that
many other officers will be sidelined now that U.S. troops have gone.
The U.S. military built the Anbar security forces almost from scratch
after the Sunni Awakening movement in 2007 succeeded in defeating the
al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgency.
And those who collaborated with the Americans are also at risk of
being targeted by the remnants of the Sunni al-Qaeda fighters, who
have been systematically pursuing those who turned against them. Now
that he has been stripped of the security that came with his position,
Dulaimi said, “I might be assassinated by terrorists at any time.” He
added, “Who is going to protect me?”
[Special correspondents Asaad Majeed and Aziz Alwan contributed to
this report.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraq-political-crisis-erupts-as-last-us-troops-leave/2011/12/17/gIQA3aor0O_story.html