The clock ticks for Iraq's time bomb

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DAMASCUS - Celebrations on the streets; young people dancing and taking pictures of each other with mobile phones. Many unveiled women promenading on the arms of their male friends. Fireworks in the air with the voice of Kazem al-Saher (a crooner from Iraq famous throughout the Arab world) coming out of parked car radios. Richer young people wining and dining at the Sheraton or the Palestine Hotel. All of these festivities over New Year in Baghdad were topped with a complete electricity blackout that left the city in darkness - and which made the fireworks all the more beautiful.

But on January 1, reality struck. The fun was over. A suicide bomber walked into the condolence service for Lieutenant Nabil Hussein Jasim, a retired officer who was killed in a terrorist attack on December 28. That attack, which took place in a crowded market in Tayaren Square, left 14 people dead. While people were mourning their deceased officer, the suicide bomber denoted his explosives, killing another 36 Iraqis.

This bloody welcome of 2008 reminded Iraqis that they shouldn't get their hopes up too high. On Christmas day, another suicide bomber had killed 10 people at a funeral in Baquba, south of Baghdad. While all of this was happening, a massive clampdown took place in al-Dour, another Iraqi city, where hundreds of young people were arrested on suspicion of hiding Saddam Hussein's former henchman, Ibrahim Izzat al-Douri, the current secretary general of the disbanded Iraqi Ba'ath Party.

Emotions in the Sunni community of Iraq had already been sour, commemorating the first anniversary of the death of their former president in December 2006. The clampdown in al-Dour only made things worse for Sunnis.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA04Ak04.html

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1. A slap in the face for Parliament

WASHINGTON - The end of 2007 produced a telltale indication of what the New Year seems likely to bring to Iraq. "We the Iraqi members of Parliament signing below demand a timetable for withdrawal of the occupation forces from our beloved Iraq," 144 members of the 275-member Parliament, a clear majority, wrote in a declaration April 2007.

Despite this, the George W Bush administration and the Iraqi government led by US-installed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the UN Security Council to extend by another year the legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq.

The move on December 18 violated both the Iraqi constitution and the resolution passed earlier this year by the Iraqi Parliament.

Many Iraqi lawmakers say that any renewal of the UN mandate not ratified by Parliament is illegal. The move almost guarantees an increase in violence and a deepening of sectarian tensions.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA04Ak03.html

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3. how long before

a viable opposition comes together in Iraq and throws al-Maliki out? Would bushco pull a Musharraf and declare martial law, suspend the constitution, arrest all the lawyers?

How can anyone call this continuing charade anything but imperialism?

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4. There will be no "coming together" in Iraq.

Humpty Dumpty will not be put together again. Maliki will retire to Libya or someplace, if he is not assassinated in the meantime.

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5. I did not mean

an actual consensus when I said "come together" - just that some faction calls BS on the puppet govt - which Sadr already has, of course. The bushco sham of a "central government" is so fragile it could vanish in an instant. Just about everyone but Sadr and bush has endrsed Biden's recommendations that the federal system prescribed in the Iraqi constitution calling be implemented - maybe they just go ahead and do it without bush's say-so. Since when is he their dictator?

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6. I give him less than a year.

To see this, consider the situation now with that one year ago. He is a puppet, and when the puppeteer puts him down, he will fold up into pile on the floor.

And, I'm sorry if you thought I was coming after you about it, I just have a very pessimistic view of the situation there.

[Rydz777]

2. Out NOW!