"Maliki has shown a... ruthlessness borrowed from the handbook of Iraq’s last strongman, Saddam Hussein.... men under Maliki’s command have arrested and threatened to detain a host of his rivals, to Basra, where security forces have swept up scores of his opponents since January, the message is: cooperate or risk his wrath"
That's BUSH'S LIBERATION, huh?
And the Zionist AmeriKan media acts as if WE HAVE FORGOTTEN WHO Saddam Hussein was!!! They TRULY THINK we are STOO-PID out here!
Another I TOLD YOU SO (if you have been reading my Iraq posts)!!!
"Maliki’s tenacity, brash style of leadership alarm Iraqi opposition" by Anthony Shadid, Washington Post | July 12, 2009
BAQUBAH, Iraq - At 11 a.m. one day in May, eight Iraqi army Humvees barreled into government headquarters of fractious Diyala province, clouds of dust billowing behind them. They had orders to arrest a council member who belonged to a party that had run afoul of Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s increasingly assertive prime minister....
Although Iraq’s parliamentary elections are not until January, the campaign has already begun, and Maliki has shown a determination to fight with a tenacity and ruthlessness borrowed from the handbook of Iraq’s last strongman, Saddam Hussein. From Diyala, where men under Maliki’s command have arrested and threatened to detain a host of his rivals, to Basra, where security forces have swept up scores of his opponents since January, the message is: cooperate or risk his wrath.
While Iraq’s sectarian war has largely ended, and the Sunnis feel they lost, another struggle for power, perhaps no less perilous, has begun in earnest. Maliki has resorted to a more traditional notion of politics in which violence is simply another form of leverage.
O' praise the LIBERATOR George W. Bush, 'eh, Iraqis?
To allies, he is what Iraq needs, a proponent of law in a state still without order. “Is al-Maliki a strongman, personally and through the constitution? Or is he a dictator?’’ asked Sami al-Askari, an aide to the prime minister. The former, he answered. “Al-Maliki has a strong personality. The constitution gives him great powers, but if he was not a strongman, he would not have done what the constitution allows him to do.’’
Opponents, some of whom decry the arrests as “a systematic campaign,’’ warned that the strife unleashed by the jockeying could soon spiral beyond control. “These political tensions are undermining the security of the country, and I’m worried about it,’’ said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister and a Kurdish leader.
And CUI BONO, 'eh?
Maliki’s ascent has become a familiar narrative in Iraq. In 2006, a reputation for weakness helped secure him the post. Opponents deemed him malleable. Since then, he has concentrated power in the hands of what critics call “the impenetrable circle’’ and taken command of military units that delivered him and his Dawa party what they had lacked since 2003: men with guns.
See: Occupation Iraqi: Meet the New Boss
But the narrative still tells only part of the story of how complicated Iraq is these days. Everyone seems to be looking for an angle, in pursuit of the coalition they think can triumph in the January elections. Everyone has a grievance, no less pronounced.
Maliki’s Shi’ite rivals - followers of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - have fought for primacy in the southern province of Qadisiyah. Another group, known as Sahwa or Awakening, filled by former Sunni fighters and long backed by the US military, is hopelessly divided. Maliki has cracked down on some of its leaders, especially in Baghdad.
Whatever. I no longer believe the MSM accounting of anything that happens in Iraq.
Do YOU understand the expression IN ONE EAR, OUT the OTHER, MSM!?
An Iraqi official said Maliki had ordered the arrests of at least six of the party’s candidates a week before the January elections. The official said he was stopped only after General Ray Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, personally intervened.
But THEY are a SOVEREIGN NATION, blah, blah, blah!
Yes, readers, I HAVE HAD IT with U.S. GOVERNMENT and MSM LIES and BULLSHIT!!!!
A spokesman for Odierno declined to comment on the report.
--more--"
"Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's million or so Christians for the most part coexisted peacefully with Muslims, both the dominant Sunnis and majority Shiites (New York Times October 17, 2007)....
Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Christians lived side by side; many intermarried"
Occupation Iraq: Women in Black
