Iraq leader: Give us guns - and troops can go (timesonlineUK)

more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2553148.html

The Times January 18, 2007


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

(Listen to the interview with Nouri al-Maliki)


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.

i thought everyone there already had an AK-47.

Let's just send Bill Richardson over to broker a deal between Bush and Malaki.