Iraq War: Iraq Prime Minister is a Failed Leader

USA Today reports that Prime Minsiter Al-Maliki support eroding in Iraq

BAGHDAD — A broad range of prominent Iraqi lawmakers say they have lost confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to reconcile the country's warring factions. A leading Kurdish lawmaker said al-Maliki should resign.

Legislators from several parties told USA TODAY that al-Maliki lacks the support in parliament to push through laws, such as a plan to distribute oil revenues, that could reduce tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. Iraq's parliament has failed to pass major legislation since a U.S.-led security plan began on Feb. 14.

"He is a weak prime minister," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator who supported al-Maliki until recently. "This government hasn't delivered and is not capable of doing the job. They should resign." (Editors note:The Kurds want their independence and that will not be a consideration under al-Maliki)

The loss of support came as Democrats agreed Monday on legislation that would force U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1. President Bush, who said he would veto the bill, has argued that Iraq's government needs more time to calm sectarian violence. (Editors note: All must consider the possibility that there will not be a decrease in violence in the foreseeable future - no matter what the political landscape turns into. The hostility is now larger than politics. Suicide bombing speaks of a type of barbaric desperation that cannot be appeased by anything but time.)

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Baghdad last week that the U.S. military commitment is not "open ended" and will be re-evaluated in late summer based in part on whether parliament has made progress. Al-Maliki seems unable to broker deals among the fractious alliance of Kurds and Shiites who supported his appointment last May, said Qasim Dawood, a member of al-Maliki's coalition.


"The present government is not competent," said Dawood, a Shiite legislator. "It's more or less paralyzed, inactive. I doubt very much that this government can continue in power much longer."

A political adviser to al-Maliki, whose term ends in 2010, said that the prime minister has no power to pass laws by himself. "We can only ask, push, the (parliament) to approve," Sadiq al-Rikabi said.

Al-Rikabi said there is no viable alternative to al-Maliki as prime minister. "Suppose he resigns," al-Rikabi said. "Then what is the solution?"




The (greatlly troubled) Bush administration "has confidence in Prime Minister Maliki," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. (Editors note: Bush also has confidence in troubled Attorney General Gonzales, and has had confidence in a series of politico's who have proven themselves corrupt and incompetent.)

Pending constitutional amendments on issues such as tax revenue sharing have stalled, said Ayad al-Samarrai, deputy chairman of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group. He said al-Maliki's poor reputation among Sunnis was partly to blame. "We don't see any progress" on sectarian reconciliation, al-Samarrai said.

Six Cabinet ministers loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose support was crucial in naming al-Maliki as prime minister, resigned this month. (Editors note: al-Maliki in the past has unfairly protected al Sadr and his militia from the coolition forces, so his departure is a significant sign of al Malaki's power even among his own people.)

"(Al-Maliki) must do something to make this government stronger," said Bahaa al-Araji, a lawmaker loyal to al-Sadr. "If not, this government will expire within a few weeks."

Contributing: David Jackson in Washington, Brian Winter in McLean, Va.

It is the position of this editor that al-Maliki is part of the problem and will not be instrumental in the solution. He has in the past claimed he does not want to be Prime Minister. He has thrown an undiplomatic fit and has refused to speak with the British after they raided a criminally run police station. He has courted Iranian friendship even though the US is politically opposed to such a friendship. He hints on one hand that he wants the US out, while on the other hand he is pocketing the money the US feeds into his coffers for his cooperation with Bush's oil initiatives in Iraq. Bush is not and has not been a good leader and he has shown a continual failure to pick good leaders. The sooner we remove al Maliki from power, the sooner a new leader can pull Iraq together and forward.

Condoleezza Rice in Baghdad

When the war was being planned Condoleezza Rice stood with the hawks when she was the President's security adviser. Some feel that she has metamorphosed into pragmatist with her move from the White House to the State Department. It was a pragmatic idea to make a surprise stop in Baghdad as the U.S. Senate deadlocked on whether to repeat a symbolic rebuke that the U.S. House handed Bush on Friday when it opposed the administration's deployment of additional combat troops to Iraq.


Her visit occurred a day after the U.S. House of Representatives renounced President George W. Bush's latest strategy to resolve the four-year-old war in Iraq, passing a nonbinding resolution that disapproves of his decision to send about 21,500 more U.S. troops to the conflict. Most of those troops are being dispatched to Baghdad.

The U.S. House vote was the strongest rebuke of a president during wartime since Congress in 1970 rescinded the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that authorized military action in Southeast Asia.

Bush's approval rating stands at 32 percent, tied for his lowest standing in Associated Press-Ipsos polling, and most people in the United States find fault with his handling of the nearly four-year-old Iraq war.

"Some do not think that this was the right war to fight, and others think that we in the administration haven't fought this war quite right," but still support U.S. forces and others in harm's way." Rice said. "I keep hearing and reading the American people don't want to fight this war anymore. I don't think that's right. The American people want to know that we can succeed,"

Problematic Maliki

Rice met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. officials in the protected Green Zone that houses the U.S. embassy.

Of Maliki, Rice said she has been ``quite impressed with his performance.''

Although Rice used her visit to publicly praise the Iraqi government's role in a new security crackdown in Baghdad, an Iraqi official said she was more critical in private.

Nouri al-Malikibecame prime minister in May 2006, and his time in office has been defined by a surge in sectarian violence and lack of progress in improving services, curbing soaring unemployment and fighting crime.

In July of 2006 al-Maliki was quoted as declining to condemn Hezbollah and blamed the violence in Israel and Lebanon, triggered by Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, on “Israeli aggression.” Making matters worse, Iraqi parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani accused Jews of masterminding killings in Iraq that were carried out by Sunni or Shiite insurgents

Last November, a Bush national security adviser had expressed doubts about the Iraqi prime minister's ability to end sectarian tensions ahead of a meeting between Bush and Maliki in Amman, Jordan. A confidential White House memo leaked in November questioned his ability to deal with the violence, and the Iraq Study Group report, prepared by a bipartisan commission, recommended that Washington should reduce military and political support to his government if it fails to make progress in curbing the violence.

In January of this year Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a published report that he wishes he could leave office before his four-year term is up and would not run again."I didn't want to take this position," al-Maliki told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. "I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again."

And though Rice spoke approvingly of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's leadership, she urged Iraqi officials to enact laws to fairly administer the country's vast oil reserves.

Rice's message to the Iraqi's:

"The American people want to see results and aren't prepared to wait forever," Rice said during a 30-minute conversation with reporters in U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's living room. "But we're also not saying to the Iraqis: 'Get it done by X date or else.' That's not the way one treats a partnership in these difficult circumstances."

Rice met with al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani and later had lunch at the U.S. ambassador's residence with a group that included the Kurdish deputy prime minister and the country's foreign minister.

"The Baghdad security plan is just beginning to unfold, and I think it's important to realize it wasn't ever intended to be a sort of single day -- it was intended to ramp up over time.''

Rice told Iraqi government leaders Saturday that the contentious debate in Washington over President Bush's war strategy reflects U.S. doubts that democracy will prevail over violence.

"Some of the debate in Washington is in fact indicative of the concerns that some of the American people have ... if the Iraqi government doesn't do what it has said it will do," Rice said she told leaders from all of Iraq's factions.


Meeting with US troops:

In a talk with U.S. personnel in Baghdad, Rice described their mission as essential ``for the security and well-being of the United States.''

Rice acknowledged the debate about the war in the U.S. and told the soldiers and civilians that their sacrifice is ``appreciated.''

This comes in contrast to Presidential hopeful Senator Barak Obama, who got his candidacy off to an inauspicious start by saying last weekend that the war “should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and on which we've now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.''


Whats happening now:


Iraqi and U.S. forces expanded searches in Baghdad and cleared neighborhoods of suspected militants this past week in an operation to beef up security in Iraq as violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims continued.

Rice said the joint operations were ``off to a good start, " and that she was `Impressed'.

But then Rice told Iraqi leaders that the Baghdad security operation needs to "rise above sectarianism" and noted that no U.S. or Iraqi forces have yet moved into the capital's major Shiite militia stronghold, the Iraqi official said.

The official said Rice told Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the initial stage of the crackdown, which began Wednesday, appeared to focus on Sunni areas and had left Sadr City, stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia, nearly untouched.

Explosions last week in Baghdad killed at least 59 people on the first anniversary of the blast at the Shiite Muslim al-Askari mosque in Samarra, an event that triggered a wave of bloodshed between Shiites and Sunnis. The United Nations has said the sectarian violence last year left 34,452 civilians dead.


Then on Sunday following Rice's visit there were twin explosions in an open-air market that claimed 62 lives and a third blast that killed one. The first blast tore through a produce market in the mostly Shiite area of New Baghdad, toppling the wooden stalls and leaving pools of blood and vegetables trampled in the chaos. Minutes later, another car bomb exploded near a row of stores.


More than 129 people were injured, including many women who were shopping, said police and rescue officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Victims were carried to hospitals on makeshift stretchers or in the arms of rescuers.

Another car bomb in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City left at least one dead and 10 wounded, police said.

It was by far the deadliest day since the security sweeps began. On Thursday, a string of car bombs killed seven civilians on the first full day of the house-to-house searches for weapons and suspected militants.

The U.S.-led teams have faced limited direct defiance as they set up checkpoints and comb neighborhoods. But that could change as they move into more volatile sections of the city. The next could be Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. soldiers pressed closer to Sadr City on Sunday and the reception changed noticeably. In previous days, Shiite families opened their doors to welcome the troops _ feeling that the American presence would be a buffer against feared attacks from Sunni militia.

On Sunday, in areas closer to Sadr City, parents slapped away the candy and lollipops given to children by soldiers.

Iran & Syria borders

The borders with Iran and Syria _ shut for three days as the plan got under way _ reopened Sunday. But new and strict rules will apply.

Moussawi, the plan's spokesman, was quoted in the Azzaman newspaper as saying the crossing points to the two nations would be open for only several hours a day and under "intense observation."
In Tehran, Syrian President Bashar Assad held talks with Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahamedinejad. The two leaders are generally on opposing sides of Iraq's sectarian divide: Iran backs the majority Shiites, and Syria is seen as a key supporter of Sunnis.Iran denies any role in the US claim that Iraqi militants receive aid and supplies from Iran, including parts for lethal roadside bombs targeting U.S. forces.Iran also denies that the anti-American cleric al-Sadr has crossed over from Iraq into Iran.

Next on Rice's agenda

Rice is due to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni Sunday and with Palestinian and Israeli officials Monday ahead of a three-way summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Feb. 19. That summit is designed to jumpstart negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

That mission was complicated by last week's announced power-sharing pact between the U.S-backed Palestinian President and Hamas militants whom the Bush administration considers terrorists.
-posted by Paul Grant (follower of Basho)

4 Blasts Kill 78 In Iraq Markets

4 Blasts Kill 78 In Iraq Markets
Skip directly to the full story.

By DAMIEN CAVE The New York Times


BAGHDAD, IRAQ - Four back-to-back explosions at two markets in central Baghdad killed at least 78 people and wounded 155 Monday, charring drivers in their cars, shredding shops and setting ablaze a seven-story building full of clothing stores that burned for more than six hours, witnesses and officials said.

The blasts - three at Shorja market, the capital's largest bazaar, and one at Bab al-Sharji a few blocks away - struck shortly after Iraq's Shiite-led government marked the anniversary, by the Islamic calendar, of an attack last year that destroyed a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra. That bombing, which shattered the shrine's golden dome, set off a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq that has yet to be extinguished.

Monday's attacks, given their timing and severity, seemed designed to fuel the country's sectarian hatreds and upstage the new U.S.-Iraqi security plan for Baghdad.

One thunderous explosion could be heard in the middle of an upbeat outdoor news conference on security in Iraq given by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the Green Zone, roughly two miles from the markets. He did not flinch or address the sound. "I'm very hopeful that the Iraqis will work together to support the Iraqi security forces and police" - boom! - "who are in charge of the operation," he said.

The bombings only underscored the challenge he faces in trying to inspire public confidence as sectarian violence continues.

The Shorja attack was at least the fifth there since August.

It came on a day when the Iraqi High Tribunal ruled that Saddam Hussein's former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan should follow his former boss to the gallows within several weeks, despite objections from U.S. officials who fear that another hanging so soon after Saddam's would undermine the credibility of al-Maliki's government.

The High Tribunal initially sentenced Ramadan to life in prison for his role in the killing of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982, but an appeals court in December sent the case back, directing that he be executed.

At the Shorja market, where a roadside bomb, a car bomb and a truck bomb blew up just after noon, people directed their anger at Sunni insurgents, who have frequently taken credit for similar attacks.

Ali Hassan Flayha, a merchant from the market who saw the blasts, said the insurgents wanted only destruction, to stop daily life, kill as many people as possible and keep the public angry at the Iraqi and U.S. governments.

"The insurgents won't let us do our work," he said. "They are shooting at us, kidnapping our workers, starting fires, just to keep us away from the market."

Bloodied bodies have become a familiar sight, he said, but government protection has not.

"The goal of the insurgents is to show us that the government is weak," he said. "We understand. They're right."

Witnesses said that one of the bombs at the Shorja market was concealed in a pickup truck that parked outside the Abu Hanifa building, a seven-story concrete structure with shops and restaurants on the first floor and wholesale clothing businesses filling the rest of the structure.

The explosion set the building on fire, witnesses said, trapping workers amid mannequins and clothing that burned like kindling and belched out smoke.

On the diplomatic front, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed U.S. accusations that Iran was arming Shiite militants in Iraq, saying Iran was opposed to "any kind of conflict" in Iraq.

"Our position for Iraq is very clear," he told ABC's "Good Morning America." "We are asking for peace, we are asking for security, and we will be sad to see people get killed, no matter who they are."

On Sunday, U.S. officials in Iraq showed journalists weapons they said had been made by Iranian factories and had been used to kill 170 Americans in the past three years. They accused Iran's leaders of authorizing the smuggling of such weapons into Iraq.

Ahmadinejad refused to address the accusation directly, but he rejected the charges by saying the Americans were trying to find a scapegoat for their problems in Iraq.

"I think that Americans have made a mistake in Iraq and unfortunately are losing, and this is a shame for Americans of course, and that's why they are trying to point their fingers to other people, and pointing fingers to others will not solve the problem," he said.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, was more direct in denying the accusations. He called the charges baseless and said the evidence had been fabricated.

"Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence," he said. "The United States has a long history of fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable."

Give us guns – and troops can go, says Iraqi leader

Give us guns – and troops can go, says Iraqi leader
Stephen Farrell in Baghdad
# Prime Minister wants change of US policy
# Mistakes over Saddam hanging, Times told

A mother comforts her daughter who was injured in the attack on university students in Baghdad, in which at least 60 people were killed (Ali Abbas/EPA)

America’s refusal to give Baghdad’s security forces sufficient guns and equipment has cost a great number of lives, the Iraqi Prime Minister said yesterday.

Nouri al-Maliki said the insurgency had been bloodier and prolonged because Washington had refused to part with equipment. If it released the necessary arms, US forces could “dramatically” cut their numbers in three to six months, he told The Times.

In a sign of the tense relations with Washington, he chided the US for suggesting his Government was living on “borrowed time”. Such criticism boosted Iraq’s extremists, he said, and was more a reflection of “some kind of crisis situation” in Washington after the Republicans’ midterm election losses. Mr al-Maliki conceded that his administration had made mistakes over the hanging of Saddam Hussein. But he refused to accept all criticism over the execution. When asked about the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s attack on Iraq’s capital punishment laws, Mr al-

Maliki cited the Italians’ summary killing of Benito Mussolini and his stringing-up from a lamppost.

Asked how long Iraq would require US troops, Mr al-Maliki said: “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 American troops will dramatically go down. That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them.”

The US Government is wary of handing over large amounts of military hardware to the Iraqis because it has sometimes ended up in the hands of militias and insurgents.

Gordon Johndroe, the White House national security spokesman, conceded that some of Mr al-Maliki’s criticism was “valid”. The training and equipping of Iraqi troops would be speeded up, he said, adding that by “self-admission we have had to redo our training and equipment programme”.

Although Mr al-Maliki’s tone was measured throughout, he is clearly irritated at US criticism that he has failed to curb Shia militias. Robert Gates, the new US Defence Secretary, said that Mr al-Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed and Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, gave a warning that he was living on “borrowed time” and that American patience was running out.

Challenged on the point, Mr al-Maliki remarked acidly: “Certain officials are going through a crisis. Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the Government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi Government or American Administration. I don’t think we are on borrowed time.”

He added: “I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don’t give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success. I believe that such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American Administration, but I can tell you that they haven’t defeated the Iraqi Government.”

He rejected the accusation that his Government was “lenient” with Shia militias, saying 400 al-Mahdi Army members had been arrested in recent days, in crackdowns in southern towns such as Karbala, Samawa, Diwaniya and al-Nasiriya.

And he insisted that he was prepared to fulfil his promises to Washington and confront the militias of Shia parties within his coalition, including Moqtada al-Sadr’s widely feared al-Mahdi Army. He conceded that some “sectarian” acts were being perpetrated. But he said there would not be a civil war because Sunni and Shia had lived in peace for many years.

Iraqi prime minister says he wants to quit office | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited

January 4: The embattled leader, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he no longer wants to be prime minister of Iraq, underlining the US's loss of control over events.


Iraqi prime minister says he wants to quit office


Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian

The embattled leader, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he no longer wants to be prime minister of Iraq, underlining the US's loss of control over events just as President George Bush is poised to announce his new strategy on the war.

Mr Bush is expected to announce early next week that he intends to increase the number of US forces in Iraq to try to contain the sectarian bloodshed that is now acknowledged to be the biggest barrier to a stable Iraq and that has worsened under Mr Maliki's watch.

But in a measure of the Bush administration's waning influence over events on the ground, Mr Maliki now says he would like to stand down as prime minister of the US-backed government.

"I wish it could be done with even before the end of this term. I would like to serve my people from outside the circle of senior officials, maybe through the parliament or through working directly with the people," Mr Maliki told the Wall Street Journal in an interview conducted on December 24 but published only this week.

"I didn't want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again," he said.

Mr Maliki's latest demonstration of his independence from Washington comes amid increasing frustration within the US administration at his inability - or unwillingness - to rein in the , Shia millitia leading Iraq's disintegration.

The polarisation of society under Mr Maliki's watch and the dangerous rise of the Shia militias was brought home this week with the spectacle of Saddam Hussein's execution taking place amid cheers for the radical cleric leader of the al-Mahdi army, Muqtada al-Sadr.

The US has been losing patience with Mr Maliki, as became evident last November with the leak to the New York Times of a memo written by the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. It asked whether Mr Maliki, a Shia who was an activist in the underground Dawa movement under Saddam's regime, could harbour sectarian sympathies despite his duty to foster national reconciliation. He was "either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action".

Mr Maliki fired back in his Wall Street Journal interview, saying US forces were hampered by their slow reaction time. "What is happening in Iraq is a war of gangs and a terrorist war. That is why it needs to be confronted with a strong force and with fast reaction."

The Pentagon made a step in that direction yesterday, saying US commanders expect to hand over full control to local authorities by the end of 2007. Major General William Caldwell, the main US military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters: "By the end of this year, the dynamics will be entirely different."