Iraqi Shiites, in a Blow to U.S., Fail to Sign Temporary Charter

[acmavm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/international/middleeast/06IRAQ.html?th

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: March 6, 2004

<snip>

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 5 — A group of Shiite leaders refused to sign Iraq's temporary constitution on Friday unless changes were made that would strengthen Shiite power, throwing the political process here into disarray and posing a major embarrassment for American officials.

Five Shiite leaders said they had decided to back out of the agreement reached earlier this week after meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful religious leader. They said they wanted to strike from the temporary constitution a provision that would allow a relatively small minority of the country's voters to block the passage of a permanent constitution, which is to be written next year.

<snip<
The five Shiite leaders, who represent the most powerful Shiite parties, want to delete that language and allow the permanent constitution to succeed or fail on a simple majority vote. According to several Iraqi officials, the five Shiite leaders are Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa Party, and two independent members, Mowaffak al-Rubaie and Muhammad Bahr ul-Uloom.

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[Born Free]

1. These guys may not be the pushovers the bush team expected

Thes guys know they may be signing away their rights, and are going about slowly and carefully, never too quick to trust the "flim flam man" in the white house

[acmavm]

2. What is REALLY interesting is the first name of the five who won't sign

the agreement. CHALABI!! Do you think George isn't livid. And the rest of the crew are probably foaming at the mouth. Now, I truly understand that this mess we're stuck in isn't funny, but I just about fell off my chair laughing when I saw Chalabi's name at the head of the list. Talk about being flim-flammed. George & Co. have just been royally screwed by their own man. He fed them a line of crap about WMDs and how the Iraqis would support us and then, when we did his dirty work, turned around and spit in their faces. I tell you, I bet Bremer about had a stroke.

And the bit about the gold pen they were going to use, that just made me laugh too.

But you know who'll get screwed in the end (besides us)? The Kurds. They're going to get the short end of the stick again. And what are the options, we go back on 'shock and awe' to quell this little uprising, or just let the Kurds down again. There's not many choices here.

This, I think, demonstrates the premise of 'a rock and a hard place'.

[Aidoneus]

3. I can't imagine why he is with them on this..

in the past he's been divided from the other opposition groups, both for his slavish servitute to American imperialist interests, but also for his support of federated organization on behalf of the Kurds (which is one of the issues here). I wonder what turned him around.. perhaps the realization that he has NO popular support aside from his collaboration with the invader armies, thus he'll probably need to make a friend or two if he wants to live past the day when the occupation forces wall themselves into the $800mil tombs and change the name that the occupation is referred to.

[Mari333]

4. Now, Connect the Dots to this:

WASHINGTON - The Army announced late Friday that it had terminated a $327 million contract with a Virginia-based firm to supply weapons and other equipment to the new Iraqi army.

The contract was to supply four battalions of the new Iraqi army with rifles, uniforms and other equipment. But it was put on hold last month after six of the 17 losing firms protested that the winning bid as unrealistically low.

The contract also was called into question because the president of Nour USA, the winning firm, is a close friend of Ahmad Chalabi, a member of Iraq's Governing Council and a favorite of Bush administration conservatives. Chalabi's exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, provided crucial intelligence and other information that the administration used to build its case for invading Iraq.






http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/8119633.htm

[4dsc]

5. Nour USA was formed last May and has no experience providing military equi

Just give us more TAXPAYER monies!!!

Do I smell scam?? Didn't chalabi run a scam in Jordan??