This is what we are surging into:
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s presentation of a new Baghdad security plan to the Iraqi Parliament on Thursday broke down in bitter sectarian recriminations, with Mr. Maliki threatening a Sunni Arab lawmaker with arrest and, in response, the Sunni speaker of Parliament threatening to quit.
Eventually, the tensions eased and lawmakers approved the security plan, which gives Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, more authority. But the episode provided the Iraqi public with a live televised view of the extent of raw anger dividing Shiite and Sunni politicians.
Outside of Parliament, bloody sectarian battles continued on the streets of Baghdad. Three hours after the confrontation between lawmakers, a huge car bomb killed at least 25 people in the Karrada district, less than a mile from Parliament in an area favored by leading Shiite politicians. Residents there reported a horrific scene, with two busloads of people trapped in their vehicles and burned alive.
Do you want your son or daughter arbitrating this dispute? Do you have any faith that even our best commanding general can overcome what the Iraq parliament cannot?
As the prime minister continued, Shiites encouraged him on and Sunni Arabs tried to shout him down.
[The Sunni Speaker] Mr. Mashhadani yelled for everyone to “shut up.”
“I cannot see how it is possible that a new security plan can work,” he said in disgust.
This was all broadcast on live Iraqi television. The Prime Minister announces a security plan, the Sunnis object, the Prime Minister threatens to have a Sunni lawmaker arrested, accuses him of massacring Shi’ites, the Speaker demands an apology…they turn the cameras off. Meanwhile, outside on the streets, busloads of innocent people are being burned alive.
I don’t know how Dick Cheney can live with himself, let alone say we’ve had tremendous successes in Iraq.
One has to wonder, who is the intended audience for these broadcasts?
If memory serves, the Iraqi’s only have a minimal amount of electrical service available, on a very intermittent basis, not to mention being too busy trying to sustain themselves as best they can and staying out of harms way. It could also be assumed that they are well aware of the animosities that exist within their own culture/society/government…pick one, all, or add additional categories.
It seems logical to conclude that the airing of these proceedings is aimed at a much broader audience throughout the middle east. But for what purpose?
Is it part of a continuing strategy to further goad Iran and Syria into some action and create another Gulf of Tonkin-esque excuse for spreading the joy of war futher? It certainly will not give the Sunni’s and Shiite’s in the broader ME any reason to be hopeful of a resolution to the bloodshed, and will further harden the positions inside and outside Iraq proper.
It’s abundantly clear that demonstrations of this nature will do nothing to quell the violence, and frankly, could be expected to inflame the tensions further by adding fuel to the civil war, which will ensure that the new troops are going to be in an even more untenable position than that which currently exists.
Perhaps I’ve become too jaded, but I can’t help but feel there’s more here than meets the eye.
John McCain: The truth.
Cheney doesn’t worry about living with himself ‘cuz he’s barely alive as it is. Did y’all see the Colbert Report last nite? The bit about the “blink-off” between Cheney and Pelosi was damn funny. Damn scary too in that Cheney blinks his eyes less than a drugged reptile.
It turns out that “eye blink tests can provide information about memory acquisition involving the cerebellar and hippocampal regions.” The less you blink…
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00001920
Yikes!
AH