Bush stays the course as a pro Iran, pro Hezbollah gov't emerges in Iraq

[ProSense]

Iraqi Prime Minister Denounces Israel’s Actions

By EDWARD WONG and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: July 20, 2006

Snip...

The comments by Mr. Maliki, a Shiite Arab whose party has close ties to Iran, were noticeably stronger than those made by Sunni Arab governments in recent days. Those governments have refused to take an unequivocal stand on Lebanon, reflecting their concern about the growing influence of Iran, which has a Shiite majority and has been accused by Israel of providing weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group.

The ambivalence of those governments has angered many Sunni Arabs in those countries, despite the centuries of enmity between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam.

Like many other people around the region, Ahmed Mekky, 40, an Egyptian lawyer and a Sunni Arab, says he supports Hezbollah because it is doing what he said the Arab leadership has been frightened to do for too long — standing up to Israel and the United States.

“We are praying that God would make Hezbollah victorious,” Mr. Mekky said as he stood beside a newspaper kiosk in downtown Cairo on Wednesday. “All the Arab governments are asleep.”

Perhaps more so than at any time since Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990, the bloodletting between Hezbollah and Israel has highlighted the huge divide between many Arab countries, and between many people and their leaders.

Sunni Arab leaders in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf Countries have complained that since the rise of a Shiite majority governing Iraq, and with Iran pressing ahead with its nuclear program, Tehran stands to emerge as the regional power. Unlike the other countries, Iran has only a tiny minority of Arabs, with Persians making up a slight majority. (Azeris are the second-largest ethnic group there.)

Some Sunni leaders see in Hezbollah a dangerous beachhead for Iranian influence in the region. They have criticized Hezbollah for staging the raid into Israel and the capture of two soldiers last week that prompted Israel’s attack on Lebanon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/world/middleeast/20shiites.html?ref=middleeast

07.25.2006

Maliki's Testy Visit: Is This What Our Troops Are Dying For?

Snip...

What more, Maliki wants to "maintain strong ties to Iran," has sided with Hezbollah in the current hostilities with Israel, and has pledged $35 million in aid to Lebanon (where is that money coming from?). And then we have the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament saying "I personally think whoever kills an American soldier in defense of his country would, have a statue built for him in that country. The parties that we cannot conciliate with are those who deliberately killed an Iraqi citizen."

So this is what over 2,500 American have died for, what over 18,500 Americans have been wounded for, what the American people have spent over $320 billion helping create: a government that makes nice with Iran, backs Hezbollah, and some of whose members think the killers of American soldiers deserve a statue? We can't bring back those lives, heal those wounds, or recoup that money, but we can say enough is enough.

In Fiasco, his damning new book about the Bush administration's tragic bungling of Iraq, Thomas Ricks quotes a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority unforgettably describing his team's mission as "pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck." Just how many more Americans have to die in the vain attempt to turn feathers into a duck? Especially a duck that wants to waddle side by side with Hezbollah and Iran.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/malikis-testy-visit-is-_b_25790.html

Beirut students ridicule US vision of 'new Middle East'

by Marc Burleigh
1 hour, 22 minutes ago

BEIRUT (AFP) - The US desire to oversee the birth of a "new Middle East" was being derided in Beirut cafes, on the eve of Rome talks on finding a solution to the Lebanon- Israel crisis.

As diplomats from around the world converged on the Italian capital, young Lebanese in the capital questioned whether any deal would emerge that would take into account their concerns -- and not just those of US President George W. Bush's government.

"I think what we are seeing right now is a masterplan that started in the US and that ends in Israel," said Ali Mansour, a 21-year-old medical student at the American University of Beirut.

He took issue with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statement that the death and destruction in Lebanon were simply the birth pains of a "new Middle East".

"Who is she to say this the birth of a new Middle East? Who asked her to play doctor in administering this childbirth?" he said.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060725/lf_afp/mideastconflicttalks_060725191526

[Tom Joad]

1. Looks like a democracy might emerge in Iraq after all.

[mom cat]

2. What a hoot. Perhaps a real democracy at that.

Probably not. We still have enough death squads operating there to create a deMOCKracy.

[KKKarl is an idiot]

3. We should not interfere in the Muslim world

We originally supported the Afghani's in their war with Russia. That brought about the birth of the Taliban & Al Queida. We supported Saddam Hussein's war with Iran. That gave us the Iraqi government who entered Kuwait unprovoked. Middle Eastern politics is to difficult for Americans to understand. This administration surely cannot understand it with their limit of one brain cell per 20 staff members. Now we have a "democratically elected" Shiite government in Iraq. Better the enemy you know. Where will this move take us in lets say 20 years? A real nuclear threat.