Thursday, November 16, 2006

The Latest Sign of Civil War




AP is reporting:



BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant Thursday for the head of the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars for allegedly inciting violence.



Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, speaking on state television, said Harith al-Dhari was wanted for inciting terrorism and violence among the Iraqi people. Al-Dhari is the top leader for the country's Sunni minority, and the move against him was likely to inflame sectarian violence already ravaging Baghdad and central Iraq.



Association spokesman Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi told Al-Jazeera television the Interior Ministry's decision‚ is condemned with all its details. I don't know how to describe it but it represents the bankruptcy of the sectarian government following one scandal after the other.


I hold no brief for al-Dhari. But it seems here's another sign that the situation in Iraq is closer to civil war than reconciliation. A spokesperson for al-Dhari, in response to the arrest warrant, accused the interior ministry "of supporting terrorism by covering for militias that are killing the Iraqi people....The decisions of this government are worthless because it only rules the Green Zone." Well, he's right on those counts. This tussle illustrates the fundamental problem for the United States: what is its role in the Shiite-Sunni conflict Bush's invasion of Iraq has unleashed? Support a government that includes parties in league with death squads? Support the Sunnis allied with forces looking to bring down the central government? Or muddle along in between? There may be no good options--and perhaps no workable ones, either.



Posted by David Corn at November 16, 2006 05:57 PM

16 comments:

David B. Benson said...

David Corn --- Depneds on one's choice of "good". BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!!!

David B. Benson said...

Well, not only "dpeneds" but also "depneds"... ;-)

David B. Benson said...

Testing --- I am goind to key it slowly and carefully: depends.

David B. Benson said...

capt --- I don't seem to be able to key without transposition errors, even when I try hard, with my fingers crossed. Sorry...

capt said...

DB,

Only until tomorrow. Then all the votes will be counted.

Thanks for the support!


capt

David B. Benson said...

Capt, you are welcome.

It is just too depressing to read TomDispatch today. So instead, I'm going to go help support the price of barley...

Pat said...

Hi Capt. Thanks for giving us this site for posting. My fingers are crossed for NM and also for FL-13 where we have 18,000 so-called undervotes. There was a public hearing earlier that I didn't attend. They discussed how to have verified voting with the electronic voting machines, and how to finalize this election.

O'Reilly said...

Hugh Hewitt (hearts) John Bolten

capt said...

Pat,


Thanks and good luck for FL-13 too.

We actually voted on paper with ink pens here. That gives me hope that my vote was not stolen.



capt

O'Reilly said...

New York Times Best Sellers "What If" Books

"If I Could Tell You How To Vote," by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald

"If I Were a Child Molester" by Michael Jackson

"If I Had Sex in the Oval Office," by Bill Clinton.


"If I Done Steroids," co-authored by Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, with an introduction by Rafael Palmiero.

"If I Had Weapons of Mass Destruction" by Saddam Hussein.

Link

O'Reilly said...

Mark Fuhrman Freaks Out Over O.J. Simpson

Mark Fuhrman, the “n” word-using former detective whose racism may have been responsible for O.J. Simpson’s acquittal, freaked out on Hannity & Colmes last night (11/16/06) over the upcoming O.J. interview on FOX TV. First, Fuhrman, now a FOX News contributor, made the racially-tinged statement that people like Simpson “will kill somebody and go have some chicken at KFC. You will catch them eatin’ chicken and drinkin’ a beer after they just murdered three people.” Then, Fuhrman completely lost it when confronted on it by Alan Colmes.

LINK

O'Reilly said...

Beltway attacks on Nancy Pelosi
By Glenn Greenwald

The mindless group-think driving the media's caricatures of Nancy Pelosi is truly astounding to behold, even considering the source. She's not even Speaker yet, and they've already pronounced her to be a bitchy, vindictive shrew incapable of leading because she's consumed by petty personal bickering rather than serious and substantive considerations. And all of this is based on nothing.

TEXT

Saladin said...

"Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, speaking on state television, said Harith al-Dhari was wanted for inciting terrorism and violence among the Iraqi people."

WHO is inciting terrorism and violence among the Iraqi people??? Are these people COMPLETELY brain dead??

capt said...

Um, "Dain Bread" ?

capt said...

Why I'm Not Celebrating Yet



Margy Waller is the project director of The Mobility Agenda at The Center for Community Change.

Apparently, we’re in for a couple years of change and disappointingly incremental policymaking. Signals are clear—and all over the press.

For example, just two days after the "left turn" election, we heard that "Victorious Democrats vow cooperative approach on taxes and the economy." Well, bollocks.

My friends and family keep asking if I am excited, celebrating, partying up a storm, and so on. I am not.

Everyone assumes that inclusionist economic policies stand a chance of implementation in the next Congress. Well, maybe—some of those ideas. But is it a new day for equitable economic policy? Not so much…not just yet.

Of course, it’s good news that so many of the president’s worst ideas are now buried deep and going nowhere. Plans to further reduce taxes on the wealthy (by eliminating the estate tax) and kill the universal retirement system (by privatizing Social Security) are dead in the 110th Congress.

But, we aren’t likely to see meaningful progress on economic fairness and inclusion just because both houses have new leadership.

Why not? It’s our own fault. Progressives haven’t given members of Congress a clear signal about what we want in years. Instead, the message from the think tank and advocacy crowd on economic and social policy has been: "Get the best deal you can!" and "Take the crumbs, if that’s all you can get from your seat at the table."

Even more importantly, we’ve in no way prepared the public to demand or support steps that improve our national economy by increasing economic and social mobility. We’ve barely touched on the need to strengthen the 30 percent of the labor market that is made up of jobs paying less than $10 an hour. We hardly ever focus our advocacy and media work on the damage to our economy stemming from the large and growing percentage of jobs no one could call "decent work."

And until voters demand equitable economic policy, we should not expect members of Congress to take the lead.

We can expect smallish changes like the very belated minimum wage increase that is on the "to-do" list of our madam speaker-elect. But, will Congress take the next logical step—one adopted by many of the successful state initiative campaigns: Ensuring that wages increase automatically with the cost of living?

Will Congress pursue any of the other new ideas developing at the state and local level to strengthen economic mobility by making bad jobs into better jobs?

Will we see federal policy movement toward the delinking of health care coverage from employment, like steps taken in a few states and one locality (San Francisco, natch)?

How about ensuring that all employees are offered a limited number of paid sick days as one city (yeah, yeah—San Francisco again) did on November 8?

Will Congress take action to clarify that employees are free to organize and negotiate for better jobs?

Sure, it’s not necessarily wrong for incoming leadership to signal a desire to cooperate with the administration and other conservatives. That’s all the voters are truly prepared to accept at this point. It’s our job to start demanding better policy in the future.

We’ve already heard "progressives" advising the new leadership to "resist the impulse to pursue big ambitions." This might be the right political advice for today, but it is also strong evidence that another kind of institution is required—one that has the freedom to focus on long-term goals and a mission specific to policy outcomes, uncolored by campaign goals.

It’s no good thinking that we can hold our fire now and turn to the bigger stuff in 2008, when many hope that progressives will still be surfing the wave of voter discontent with conservatives. We have to start sharing our most ambitious goals now, if we want them to be adopted by future candidates, members of Congress, and presidential administrations.

The thing about the new Congress is not so much what its members choose to do, as what we share with them about our expectations. If our stated goals are limited, then the outcomes will be small-bore and we shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s not about them; it’s about what we want.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

That's what I'm talking about. Cancel the BS celebrations and party parties and let's stay on these congress-critters with what we demand as an agenda. The idea that because they are from the opposition[sic] party they will oppose is not supported by experience.


capt

capt said...

New thread.