Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

CounterPunch Diary
Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

As he heads for the office these days Nouri al-Maliki should bid his family especially tender farewells. If the patterns of US foreign policy are any guide, the Iraqi prime minister is a very poor insurance risk.

On Monday August 20 a leading Democratic senator, Carl Levin of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee returned from a weekend outing to Iraq and declared publicly that Iraq's parliament should remove al-Maliki from power. "The Maliki government is nonfunctional," Levin declared, "and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders."

The next day Hillary Rodham Clinton, front-runner of Democrats seeking the nomination of their party for the presidency went before the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and reiterated her senate colleague's call. She said that al-Maliki should be replaced by a "less divisive and more unifying figure."

The final grim news for al-Maliki came on Wednesday when President Bush affirmed confidence in the prime minister, declaring him to be a fine fellow.

Levin, Clinton and Bush all simultaneously declared that they believe the briefings of the United States military commanders in Iraq. They exult that the "surge", advocated and presided over by General David Petraeus last winter, is now working. Baghdad is more secure. Casualties are down. The sectarian groupings in Iraq have been checked. Nation-building can proceed.

[rodeodance]

1. Baghdad may have less deaths but the deaths have DOUBLED in Iraq!

[frogcycle]

2. Decentralization

Cities are overcrowded, industry moving to the suburbs and smaller towns - you know - progress!

[Disturbed]

3. al Maliki will relocate to Iran.