So according to Hassan al-Suneid, an aide to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki, Maliki demanded a video conference with George Bush Saturday, and when he got Bush on the line he managed to win from him a promise “move swiftly to turn over full control of the Iraqi army to Baghdad.”
That quote was from the AP report on the conversation, as written by Steven Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra. They added that Suneid:
- said later the prime minister was intentionally playing on U.S. voter displeasure with the war to strengthen his hand with Washington.
And this is what Suneid quoted Maliki as having told Bush on the phone:
- “The U.S. ambassador is not (L. Paul) Bremer (the former U.S. administrator in Iraq). He does not have a free rein to do what he likes. Khalilzad must not behave like Bremer but rather like an ambassador.”
The writers noted that this was
- the fourth time in a week that al-Maliki challenged the U.S. handling of the war. The ripostes flowed from an announcement by Khalilzad on Tuesday that al-Maliki had agreed to a U.S. plan to set timelines for progress in quelling violence in Iraq.
Al-Maliki’s anger grew through the week until on Friday, al-Suneid said, the prime minister told Khalilzad: “I am a friend of the United States, but I am not America’s man in Iraq.”
After Saturday’s talks, White House spokesman Tony Snow said of al-Maliki: “He’s not America’s man in Iraq. The United States is there in a role to assist him. He’s the prime minister — he’s the leader of the Iraqi people.”
Snow said that reports of a rift between the United States and Iraq were wrong and that Bush had full confidence in al-Maliki.
And if you believe that, then I have a nice piece of swamp in Florida I’d like to sell you…
It seems to me this might be the pivotal moment in Maliki’s relationship with the Bushites?
There have, of course, been many reports in the past month or so that the Bushites are getting so “tired” of Maliki, or are so “dissatisfied” with him for one reason or another, that they have fairly inelegantly been threatening him that they’d overthrow him in a coup if he didn’t behave.
Well, who’d do that? The Bushites and whose army?
For his part, Maliki now seems to be acting as if he finds such threats and reports inherently non-credible. And maybe at this point, he’s right?
On the other hand, if I were him I’d be very, very careful regarding all aspects of personal security in the days ahead.
Perhaps especially in the days after November 7? After all, it wouldn’t play too well at the polls that day if Bush’s “Potemkin democratization” project in Iraq fell apart in quite such an evident way between now and then. But after November 7??
Surely Mr. Maliki is familiar with the story of Ngo Dinh Diem, his counterpart of another era. No doubt he is dancing as fast as he can. But of course, it won’t save him in the end.
Stanley Karnow reports the following exchange between Diem and Henry Cabot Lodge (the Khalilzad of his day), who had played a key role in orchestrating the coup that brought down Diem’s government:
“DIEM: Some units have made a rebellion, and I want to know what is the position of the United States.
LODGE: I do not feel well enough informed to be able to tell you. I have heard the shooting but am not acquainted with all the facts. Also, it is four thirty A.M. in Washington, and the U.S. government cannot possibly have a view.
DIEM: But you must have some general ideas. After all, I am a chief of state. I have tried to do my duty. I want to do now what duty and good sense require. I believe in duty above all.
LODGE: You have certainly done your duty. As I told you only this morning, I admire your courage and your great contribution to your country. No one can take away from you the credit for all you have done. Now I am worried about your physical safety. I have a report that those in charge of the current activity offer you and your brother safe-conduct out of the country if you resign. Had you heard this?
DIEM: No. [And then, after a pause] You have my telephone number.
LODGE: Yes. If I can do anything for your physical safety, please call me.
DIEM: I am trying to reestablish order.”
-Stanley Karnow, “Vietnam – A History” (1983)
Within hours after this, Diem was dead, and the strong-arm generals then favored by Washington were in charge of the Saigon government. The rest, as they say, is history.
if I was bush I’d take this rivalry to the front page WWE style. I mean, please don’t throw me in the briar patch brear bear. if maliki is indeed the leader of iraq please mr maliki KICK US OUT FOR ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY IN THE WORLD
It might not matter by 7th November:
U.S. to Lead Gulf Naval Maneuvers off Iran
The United States will lead international naval maneuvers in the Gulf off Iran’s west coast next week aimed at fighting weapons proliferation, a U.S. State Department official said Friday.
The announcement came in the context of tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and reports of possible terror threats against oil installations in the Gulf.
On Monday, Australia, Bahrain, Britain, France, Italy and the United States will participate in the exercises that will simulate inspection of ships carrying illicit weapons-related materials, the official said.
Gulf of Tonkin anyone?.
John c. makes a good point.
Maliki must know that he is seen by many as a US appointee, and that US behaviour and statements have been reienforcing that image.
Maybe he’s finally decided he needs to appear less reliant on the US.
It’s quite a bind the US finds itself in (yet again). It wants, at least rhetorically, an effective Iraqi govt. But it wants an Iraqi govt that it approves of, which leads it to meddle, which delegitimises the Iraqi govt, making it less effective, which leads to more meddling…..
It’s well known cycle. There can’t be an effective, legitimate Iraqi govt with the current US presence.
According to Juan Cole, Maliki feels betrayed by the US because:
They promised him, last summer when they launched the major security offensive to retake Baghdad, that the U.S. would take care of Sunni guerrilla movement in Baghdad before moving against Mahdi Army […]. That way, Maliki could to go to the Shi’ite elders in Baghdad and say, you are safe, you no longer need militias and they are a source of discord, so they must be disbanded. But the Americans failed to dislodge the Sunni insurgents, and then they go after the Mahdi army anyway — and that enrages Maliki because it weakens his government in such a way that it could fall.
I read this post trying to believe what written here, I can’t, I can not digest it at all.
I don’t think I am out of this world!!!
This is a real story from Iraqi man working in one of Iraqi ministry, worked with American early days of invasion, please read it carefully and understands what the link from the story in regards to Al-Maliki and Bush.
A US Official/Consultant/Supervisor in that ministry asked a group of Iraqi employee headed by Engineer give him a study/reports estimating how much daily living (The amount of food, energy, petrol etc…) each Iraqi citizen needs for his daily living.
The group went, the head of group brought back the report presented to US man when the read the report he start madly shouting and demanding from this poor Iraqi man to cut what they estimated needs and asking him with shouting is this for US citizens living or what…..and he warren him he will fired if he did not make his report accordingly..
Imagine this story and reading back what Helena and others wrote about Al-Maliki with Bush, it doesn’t be some thing can be believable at all.
I can not see Al-Maliki can get his chin up when he speak to Bush or any US commanders in Iraq.
Just two days ago Al-Sharq Al-Awsate newspaper reported an interview with Al-Maliki with Reuters saying he can not move or orders a smallest Iraqi Military group to do any thing at all unless he get permission from US, imagine now he talking to BUSH argue with him and he “he managed to win from him a promise” !!
To me this is just a new Tactic/Game playing to fake the public in US and Iraq (which I don’t think its works with Iraqis) to make things that US changing here position in Iraq and gives Al_Maliki some distance to looks like more Iraqi that US Poppet and Slave hired and paid by US…..
Just to remind the readers here the head of the security forces in Iraq “I forgot his name” he selected by US and he is reported to them from the date Bremer left till now and all those PM from Ayad Alawi, Ja’afry and now Al-Maliki they don’t have any power in any way for this guy. Also those 100 US left behind by the last order by Bremer they have the control and authority they can fire any minister in Iraq.
whatever we discussing here, it is clear to say US have all the power on the way that the political system in Iraq structured right now to me hiding the head under the sand from the reality in Iraq its not the way let us write here in theism that the politic and power in Iraq today its near perfect and its transitional in any shape of form..
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=538&type=W
“It took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a stroke of the pen …
This “Stroke of the Pen” cheered by some US freaks who looks to their benefits believing Iraq transformed by this “Stroke of the Pen” as which certainly dose not and will not reflect Iraqi wishful.
Former Reagan and Bush 41 official Bruce Bartlett said with no small amount of envy that an occupation government doesn’t have to “worry about all the political and transition problems that have made adoption of fundamental tax reform here so difficult,” and Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, called the move “extremely good news.” Meanwhile, one Middle East expert briefed on the plan told the Post “A piece of social engineering is being done on Iraq, but it has almost no support from other members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.”
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/39466/
If Maliki does not flee Iraq he is a dead man. The US now has no use for him, the Sunnis hate him, and the Shiites will blame him for attacks from US forces.
Mad because the US broke a promise? Don’t make me laugh. If Maliki believes anything the POTUS tells him he would be the stupidest person on earth. The US has NEVER been unable to deter Sunni forces, why would Maliki suddenly believe they could now?
IMO why Maliki is distancing himself from Bush is because he now knows the US is going to carpet bomb Iraq after the election. Kissenger’s ‘advice’ will be followed. Bush has no choice (in his mind). It’s either leave or mass death. He will pick mass death. It has suddenly dawned on Maliki that he has worked for madmen all this time.
No ‘leader’ in Iraq can retain credibility with the Iraqi people if they live/work in the Green Zone. How would YOU feel if your country was led by people who lived in an armed fortress protected by foreign troops (and foreign mercs) while your family was under constant threat?
Particularly after the bombs come down from above.
.
John, I wish I had time to respond at length to your all too appropriate reference to Ngo Dinh Ziem – the “first death in November” (the 3rd) that changed the world in 1963…..
Funny thing, when I first came here to UVA (n 83), I had the fortune to get to know Fritz Nolting rather well – the Kennedy Administration’s first Ambassador to Vietnam. Before he died, Ambassador Nolting did finally publish a short version of his experiences – and it was sadly ignored then.
Nolting was hardly a stooge for Diem, nor was he blind to Diem’s, shall we say, “Mandarin” habits of governance…. Yet Nolting’s chief complaint – and I still think it worthy of a major reconsideration – was about the behavior of the US media in 1962…. There were only THREE full time US journalists in Vietnam at the time – and they largely have written the “history” of events then – and became top figures among the “establishment” MSM… e.g., David Halberstam…. (by the way, lest I be misunderstood, Nolting should not be confused with Lynne Cheney — even as I think many of today’s “neocons” have repeated precisely the mistakes made by Kennedy’s braintrust in 63…))
To Nolting, the journalists in Vietnam circa 1962 wrote only of Diem’s faults, ignored the dangers afoot, and were naive about the prospects for any potential replacement…. Worse, they were extraodinarily influential in changing the thinking in the JFK elite – including then Ambassador to India, JK Galbraith – who tragically advised JFK that “any general” could do a better job of running S. Vietnam than was Diem…. Lodge – Nolting’s successor – was the Republican Brahmin who bought the same logic – about how easy it would be for us to defend South Vietnam if only we could have in place a leader who was, well, more like us….
That hope for a George Washington was indeed naive…. Few Americans to this day know that we did everything but pull the trigger that assassinated Diem. And we then painfully learned that a Vietnamese GW was not forthcoming, nor could there be, as long as it was perceived that his rule was dependent on American patronage…. From then on, any hope of a South Vietnamese leader having authentic “legitimacy” with his people was made supremely more difficult…..
I share Helena’s doubt about the US having the stupidity now to try to orchestrate the removal of Maliki…. Then again, that’s my “head” talking…. and my gut tells me to be afraid, be very afraid…. November 3rd is just ahead….
A telling sign – Wolfie Blitzer today was referencing Maliki as being “a good friend of the Iranians.” NBC’s jr. correspondent in Iraq has been beating a drum about the Shia militias being supplied by Iran….. (and never mind Fox – where they’re trying to pin it all on Iran – and Maliki as Iran’s willing stooge)
Sure hope that was just Blitzer trying to bait an ultra- right wing Congresswoman from Florida….
On the other hand, the MSM might yet again be setting the table….
Nah, Iraq is different, right?
The Domino affect, the liars stack up for Iraq chaos as 3rd of Nov coming
Michael Steele, the Republican lieutenant governor, said the situation in Iraq was not President Bush’s fault and he faulted the Pentagon for poor planning.
“There’s not a great deal of confidence on the ground that we can get this thing done,” Steele said. “The Department of Defense did not give the president the kind of strategy to win this war.” Asked where the war stood now, he replied, “I think the war in Iraq stands with a mess we have to fix.”
Go and fix yourself Michael Steele
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900243.html
I must be gettin’ old. Quick checks confirm it was November 2nd, not the 3rd. Following essay sketch will remind us of the key event leading to the US “shooting its ally” in Saigon….
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst;jsessionid=FdbLW2nDnhhWpnmL1TsvbXwXRVJngGJw23GRrMZTNC1QLFrVJ2L1!67577388?a=o&d=5002141549
Essay reminded me of some of the recently deceased Galbraith’s other infamous whoppers of the time. (like the one about “nothing succeeds like successors”)
Think to about Tri Quanq – the Monk who so “brilliantly” played the foreign media at the time…. (61-63) Shades of Sistani…. nah. Muqtada al-Sadr?
By the way, to clarify, I remember Nolting as the philosopher turned Ambassador (he had a Ph.D. from UVA), an idealist of the Virginia “conservative” variety – attuned to contests of ideas and proud to be an American – but profoundly nervous/humble about what we today we would recognize as neoconservative arrogance about exporting and transplanting American values and governmental systems to other cultures…..
Someday I’d like to ask, respectfully, Peter Galbraith – JKG’s son and now chief advocate for the Kurds – about his father’s legacy re. Diem.
about exporting and transplanting American values and governmental systems to other cultures…..
Oh..yah
Torturing, Rapes, looting, Laying, Corruptions….. End of the list of “American values and governmental systems”
Please keep them for you; enjoying no one needs American expired stocks
“In an interview with Pham Van Dong, one American asked the North Vietnamese foreign minister how he could call the Saigon government an ‘American puppet’ when it acted with such consistency against American interests. ‘Ah,’ replied the minister, ‘it’s a puppet, all right. It’s just a bad puppet.'” — Frances Fitzgerald, “Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam”
As a victim/veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972) I have no problem understanding the political plight of Nuri Al-Maliki, the bad puppet mayor of Baghdad’s Green Zone Castle. By other names, we would know him as Ngo Dinh Diem, Nguyen Cao Ky, or Nguyen Van Thieu, to name only three of the musical-chairs “presidents” of “South Vietnam” who tried to ride the foreign American tiger (or Lunatic Leviathan, as I prefer to call us) to power, riches, and political legitimacy: none of which their own countrymen would willingly grant them. Eventually and predictably, of course, all fell off and became unsatisfying snacks for the tiger’s never-satiated hunger for power, riches, and political legitimacy in America: none of which the American people will willingly grant unless entertainingly deceived by their own government. Hence, the tiger’s need to pose as a selfless, altruistic unicorn whose magical properties beguile the marginally educated and hapless American populace every time.
I have to agree with Zbigniew Brezinski who recently said that those Iraqis who say they want America to remain in Iraq will probably leave Iraq with us when we depart — by helicopter from the Green Zone Castle embassy rooftop or otherwise. Given that so many of America’s “South Vietnamese” (strangely speaking with harsh, Catholic, North-Vietnamese accents) have settled in “Little Saigon” (sometimes known as Westminster, California), I will not find it at all amiss when Messrs al-Maliki, Chalabi, Alawi, et al, wind up succeeding in business without really trying in “Litte Baghdad” (sometimes known as Laughlin, Nevada.) “Fight ’em there so they can set up shop here,” I like to say.
Marx had it slightly wrong. Instead of history repeating itself “first as tragedy and then as farce,” in the case of America, the Lunatic Leviathan, history just keeps repeating itself as one tragic farce after another.
Perhaps especially in the days after November 7? After all, it wouldn’t play too well at the polls that day if Bush’s “Potemkin democratization” project in Iraq fell apart in quite such an evident way between now and then. But after November 7??
I fear that there would be a remake of Falludja, but this time in Baghdad and the target will be Muktada al Sadr and his Mehdi Army.
Also things are going really bad in Basra (known to be favorable to Al’Sadr or some of his splinter groups).The UK has evacuated the consulate. It looks really serious.
Christiane,
“In the meantime, the Bush administration, deeply worried about the escalating military engagement, resulting from the ill-advised attack against al-Sadr, was actually consulting Iran, trying to find ways to defuse the violence. Working through back-channel State Department contacts and the Swiss Embassy, which represents U.S. interests in Iran (there are no formal diplomatic relations), U.S. officials were consulting steadily with the Iranian foreign ministry. The United States hoped that the Iranians would be able to persuade more moderate clerics such as Sistani, himself an Iranian, to condemn al-Sadr, or mediate in the conflict. At the same time these talks were being held, Iranians were reading “experts” in American newspapers stating that they were to blame for al-Sadr’s violence against the United States.”
Reuters:”Iraq asks U.S. troops to stay”
http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoChannel.aspx?storyId=f72a9c809709466af910549d073f974b6ebbd1c4&channelid=3fe70fe45a9e09f79818a5848a0a6039e8e2a37b&WTModLoc=
This remind me when western media talking about old regime and his propaganda machine of those massive crowded people demonstrated in the streets in Baghdad and other Iraqi city supporting and shooting for the Big Guy, now the Big guy changed but we still get same propaganda machine working as same as old regime used it in Iraq….
Good Day. How about some thought put into the Aussie mufti
and his sermon about men being cat and women being uncovered meat? That is big news down here.
Aussie – why don’t you start a blog?
When you have your own blog, you get to pick the story du jour.
Crikey, Aussie mate!
All blokes know we say “g’day” down under in Oz. Not “Good Day.”
Any smoke that would bring up “uncovered meat” as “big news” doesn’t have enough heat on the baaaarbeeeey.
Mid-Term Iraq Election next Tuesday
“This pix is of a letter that was included in my absentee ballot packet that arrived last wk. Hubby and I both requested an absentee ballot from our board of elections, they approved our request (we followed the EXACT instructions they gave us over the phone) and then upon recieving the ballots, we filled them out (per the instructions included in the ballot packet) signed them, photocopied each ballot so we had paper proof of our vote, sealed them, weighed them at the post office to make sure that they fell under the 2 ounce weight (They did. In fact each ballot weighed 1.9oz, which means they needed NO more than .78 cents of postage.) We attached two .39 cent stamps on each envelope and then mailed them in, just as the red underlined section of the letter above directed. The problem? Well, according to this from the Akron Beacon Jrnl
, the ballots were supposed to require .87 cents postage… not the .63 cents we were told in that Board of Elections letter, and now 1000s upon 1000s of absentee ballots may get tossed b/c the post office says they will not send them back to the voter OR foward them on to the board of elections to be counted. Since when do ballots get to be stuck in post office limbo? Sounds like voter suppression or a poll tax, no?”
Tell me again…why did we invade Iraq?
Ex-Hussein political adviser claims Iraq accepted Bush’s ultimatum before invasion
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/ExHussein_political_adviser_claims_Iraq_accepted_1030.html
The parallels with that ‘other’ war are becoming more concrete daily .. hourly even. Have just re-read M.Scott Peck’s ‘People of the Lie’ – anyone else read it?
The Iraq war is lost. Only the Bush Administration, along with his ‘coalition’, are the only ones that believe they are winning. Now come the lies and deceipt. Rather than face the inevitable, the prosecutors of this war will bury their fear in the same propergander as did previous Administrations. And as anyone who has anything to do with couselling will know, the failure to confront reality has but one result – failure. Rather than own up to their own failings now the US will drag the coalition along down that same inextricable path that that ‘other’ war followed. Will we yet see helios leaving the green zone as the mob come thundering in from out of the desert?
The parallels with that ‘other’ war are becoming more concrete daily .. hourly even. Have just re-read M.Scott Peck’s ‘People of the Lie’ – anyone else read it?
The Iraq war is lost. Only the Bush Administration, along with his ‘coalition’, are the only ones that believe they are winning. Now come the lies and deceipt. Rather than face the inevitable, the prosecutors of this war will bury their fear in the same propergander as did previous Administrations. And as anyone who has anything to do with couselling will know, the failure to confront reality has but one result – failure. Rather than own up to their own failings now the US will drag the coalition along down that same inextricable path that that ‘other’ war followed. Will we yet see helios leaving the green zone as the mob come thundering in from out of the desert?
The parallels with that ‘other’ war are becoming more concrete daily .. hourly even. Have just re-read M.Scott Peck’s ‘People of the Lie’ – anyone else read it?
The Iraq war is lost. Only the Bush Administration, along with his ‘coalition’, are the only ones that believe they are winning. Now come the lies and deceipt. Rather than face the inevitable, the prosecutors of this war will bury their fear in the same propergander as did previous Administrations. And as anyone who has anything to do with couselling will know, the failure to confront reality has but one result – failure. Rather than own up to their own failings now the US will drag the coalition along down that same inextricable path that that ‘other’ war followed. Will we yet see helios leaving the green zone as the mob come thundering in from out of the desert?