US attempt to pull Iraq back from the brink

[leftchick]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1957253,00.html



Cheney asks Saudis to rein in Sunni insurgents as Iran increases its stake in the diplomatic game

Paul Harris in New York, Jonathan Steele in Irbil, Iraq and Robert Tait in Tehran
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer


As Iraq stood on the brink of all-out civil war yesterday, diplomats from the US and the Middle East began a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at preventing the beleaguered country's collapse.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney took a rare trip abroad to fly to Riyadh for talks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a close American ally. He planned to try to secure Saudi help in calming the situation in Iraq. At the same time, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani postponed a trip to Iran because of security problems at Baghdad airport. The trip is now expected to occur today.

The talks are just the beginning of a bout of diplomacy across the Middle East. This week President George Bush will fly to a regional conference in Jordan where he will meet several key Arab leaders, likely to include the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will join Bush on the trip.

The latest violence in Iraq, which has seen hundred of civilians killed in bombings and retaliatory attacks, has raised the spectre of ethnic civil war in the country, and Western diplomats are now engaged in attempts to stem the bloodshed. However, it is not clear what they can achieve. Cheney's meeting with King Abdullah will see him push the Saudis to use their influence with Sunni insurgents in Iraq to halt attacks on the country's Shia majority. He also wants the oil-rich nation to cough up more cash for Iraqi reconstruction projects, which have slowed to a snail's pace in the face of the everyday communal violence.

One problem fuelling the violence is that Iraq is becoming a forum for its neighbours to exercise their influence. Iraq's Shia politicians and their powerful militias are increasingly under the sway of Iran. In flexing its muscles on the world stage, Iran is also carving out its own diplomatic path on Iraq. The expected Iran-Iraq summit in Tehran with Talabani is part of that process and could presage a later three-way meeting between Iraq, Syria and Iran which would be likely to outrage the US.

[Trajan]

1. The once proud Cheney ....

Falling to his knees before Islamic royalists, his true masters, and begging for succor ....

I wonder how we are being sold out this time ?

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. Hannity looks like poor old Jack Palance on jockey's rations, doesn't he?

[Rose Siding]

2. The only dolts who still think Iraq is on the "brink" of anything are inside the Green Zone

KATHLEEN KOCH: Michael, the Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying this is not a civil war. What are you seeing?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.

This is what we're talking about. We're talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.

We're having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We're seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We're seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.

I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/24/ldt.01.html

[Barrett808]

4. Well, Juan Cole is reporting that the insurgents are on the brink of taking the Green Zone

According to what he's hearing, it's not a question of if, but when.

[rodeodance]

9. thanks for the post.

[annabanana]

11. Are the insugents all Sunni? (The old army?). . . n/t

[Barrett808]

14. Apparently. Here's the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2628902&mesg_id=2628987

[aquart]

6. Death squads made up of boys who should be in school

and men who should be at work in electric plants or stores or ministries or mosques or banks or farms.

But they know, now, if they don't kill the men on the next block, those men will come and kill them. They were neighbors before. They rode buses together. Argued soccer scores. Discussed the merits of cell phones and other equipment.

Then we invaded their country.

What's the karma for ever thinking this was a good idea?

[truthisfreedom]

3. leave it to a foreign media source to use the words "civil war"

ours don't have the guts.

[okoboji]

5. wow

".....preventing the beleaguered country's collapse."


but I thought George said we were winning? did he lie?

[krispos42]

7. All excellent reasons why we should not have gone in at all

We drastically changed the dynamic of the Middle East by making Iran the preeminate power there, then we started to scare the hell out of the Iranians by threatening nuclear strikes. Hmmmm, bad idea?

If we had done it right in the first place (half a million troops or more for five to ten years), this might have turned out okay.

Anything else, you get civil war and power struggles.

And yet, the people who made these decisions? Not removed, not resigned in disgrace, nothing. No accountability at all.

[sweetheart]

8. "So dick, how's our plan progressing?"

saudi: Hi Dickie, good to see you. Listen, you promised to get iran under
control in return for the building demolition arrangement, and you're not
keeping good on your part of the bargain."

Dick: The army is ready to serve you but we need more oil.

saudi: We agree with israel that an independent kurdistan must exist, and
that shiia iraq be its own government, and sunni iraq as well. We presume
you are still with the plan.

Dick: Yea. Turkey's fair game, now that its in never-will-be-europe.

saudi: Dick, iran is still not sorted, we hear of a secret nuclear arrangement with pakistan,
and this concerns us, so we want you to station a nuclear deterrent on our soil to
defend from an imminent threat from israel and pakistan.

[annabanana]

10. What a steaming load of horseshit..

Al Sadr was on Iraq's state owned TV station calling for retribution against the Sunnis.

bottom line: It's not looking good for that part of the population that used to be in charge, and on whose land there is no oil.

[Toots]

13. The talks are just the beginning of a bout of diplomacy

Hmmm wouldn't it have been nice if this were done over three years ago...but we don't talk to those inferior to us.....