Kurds' Leaders Said to Attempt to Block Shiite

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 22 - Some leading Kurdish political figures are trying to stall the formation of a new Iraqi government in an effort to force out Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite chosen two weeks ago as prime minister, Iraqi and Western officials said.

Such an effort could further delay forming a government at a sensitive time. The past week has seen a sharp increase in insurgent violence, including the downing Thursday of a commercial helicopter that left 11 people dead. One of the victims was apparently executed by the attackers.

---

WASHINGTON, April 22 - Leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee have urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to seek a formal invitation from the new Iraqi government for American troops to remain until domestic security forces are capable of fully defending their country.

A letter on April 18 from Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican committee chairman, and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat, argued that the initiative could "substantially reduce the daily threats to U.S., coalition and Iraqi security forces."

NY Times

That sounds like it would hurt.

.. constipating!

lol

A letter on April 18 from Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican committee chairman, and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat, argued that the initiative could "substantially reduce the daily threats to U.S., coalition and Iraqi security forces."
----------------------------------------------------------

I don't think so.

fuckwitted cluelessness in the halls of Congress.

either he is losing his mind or he is being paid off. No one is that dim. Well, perhaps a freeper is.

I may email him this article and perhaps he will snap out of it...


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD21Ak02.html

<snip>

To add fuel to the fire, Talabani now is also in favor of using Kurdish peshmerga and assorted Shi'ite militias to fight the Sunni Arab resistance - a certified recipe for civil war: this could begin the day the peshmerga are sent to guard Kirkuk's oil fields.

<snip>

Don't touch our thugs
According to Washington's script, progressive invisibility of the occupying force means increasing repression exercised by Iraqi forces. This means the return - in full force - of Saddam's Mukhabarat agents, now posing as agents of the new Iraqi security and intelligence services. Seemingly, that is the way the disenfranchised Muqtada-regimented masses see it: Bush equals Saddam because the same people who repressed us are back. Not to mention that everyone painfully remembers how George Bush senior did nothing to prevent Saddam from smashing the Shi'ite uprising at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. The masses correctly interpreted the meaning of Rumsfeld's "message" to the Shi'ite al-Jafaari: don't touch the defense and interior ministries, ie, don't touch our old Mukhabarat allies and counterinsurgency experts.

Not featured in the elaborate Pentagon plans to regiment Mukhabarat agents is that these same Sunni, Saddam-era operatives may not be exactly inclined to fight the Sunni resistance. To complicate the equation, 70% of the US-trained Iraqi security forces are former Ba'athists. The top commando, with 10,000 operatives, is almost 100% composed of former Saddam army officers. If Jaafari's government purges them, it's the end of the American dream of having Iraqis doing the dirty jobs.

All the explosive issues - federalism, who gets Kirkuk, the fate of the oil industry - which translated into nine weeks of turbulence before a president, two vice presidents and a prime minister were appointed - are now back into the negotiations over a new constitution. People in Baghdad knows it's unrealistic to expect a draft of the new constitution in the course of the next four months, according to the American-imposed calendar.

Ominous signs abound. Sunni tribal sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, one of the two vice presidents, is furious that the Shi'ites and Kurds have decided to give only four ministries to Sunni Arabs, instead of the original six. Even moderate Sunnis now accuse Shi'ites and Kurds of marginalizing what we have termed the Sinn Fein stance of the Sunni Arab resistance.

and watching everything else that has transpired over the last 4 years. It has become very apparent that civil war in Iraq is part of the plan.