Iraqi PM condemns Israeli Invasion

[Bodo]

[quote][url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/world/middleeast/20shiites.html?th&emc=th]Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq on Wednesday forcefully denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, marking a sharp break with President Bush’s position and highlighting the growing power of a Shiite Muslim identity across the Middle East.

“The Israeli attacks and airstrikes are completely destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure,” Mr. Maliki said at an afternoon news conference inside the fortified Green Zone, which houses the American Embassy and the seat of the Iraqi government. “I condemn these aggressions and call on the Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo to take quick action to stop these aggressions. We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression.”

. . . .

His stance is noteworthy because it is a significant split with American policy toward Israel. It has been the Americans’ hope that Iraq would become President Bush’s staunchest ally among Arab nations. The Americans arranged a series of elections that ended up putting Shiite parties in power, and the White House helped boost Mr. Maliki by pushing last spring for the ouster of the prime minister at the time, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Maliki relies on the presence of 134,000 American troops in Iraq to stave off the insurgency led by Sunni Arabs, who ruled over the majority Shiite Arabs for decades.

The resentment of the Iraqi government toward Israel calls into question one of the rationales among some conservatives for the American invasion of Iraq — that an American-backed democratic state here would inevitably become an ally of Israel and, by doing so, catalyze a change of attitude across the rest of the Arab world[/url].[/quote]

All right Neo-Cons!! Way to go!! We have a new proxy for Iran in Iraq. We did for the Iranians what they could not do for themselves. We gave them Iraq. Yeah . . . I am being smug here . . . . it’s a bitch all the lives and money put into this, and the result is an ally of Iran rather than the U.S.

Bodo

[MikeN]

Not much of a surprise, given Mr. Maliki’s background. He’s usually referred to as having a reputation as " tough", or being a " hard man" How did he get that, I wonder?

In 1980, the Saddam Hussein government sentenced al-Maliki to death for his activism in the Dawa party. Thereafter, he lived in exile, first in Iran and later in Syria. In Syria, he headed the party’s Jihad Office, a branch responsible for directing activists and guerrillas fighting Saddam Hussein’s regime from outside of Iraq.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawad_al-Maliki

[quote]The American embassy in Kuwait was bombed in a series of attacks whose targets also included the French embassy, the control tower at the airport, the country’s main oil refinery, and a residential area for employees of the American corporation Raytheon. Six people were killed, including a suicide truck bomber, and more than 80 others were injured. The suspects were thought to be members of Al Dawa, or “The Call,” an Iranian-backed group and one of the principal Shiite groups operating against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The U.S. military took no action in retaliation. In Kuwait, 17 people were arrested and convicted for participating in the attacks. One of those convicted was Mustafa Youssef Badreddin, a cousin and brother-in-law of one of Hezbollah’s senior officers, Imad Mughniyah. After a six-week trial in Kuwait, Badreddin was sentenced to death for his role in the bombings.

Over the following years, the arrest and imprisonment of the “Kuwait 17” (also known as the “Al Dawa 17”), became one of the most consistent demands of the kidnappers of Western hostages in Lebanon and plane hijackers.[/quote]

pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline … /cron.html

During the Iran-Iraq War, al-Dawa also committed violent acts against both Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq and Western targets. It was widely viewed in the West as a terrorist organization in this period. It attempted to assassinate Tariq Aziz, Hussein’s longtime loyalist, in 1980; and attempted to assassinate Hussein himself in 1982 and 1987. In 1983 it simultaneously bombed the American and French embassies in Kuwait and several other domestic and foreign targets in Kuwait. This led to the imprisonment of the “Kuwait 17” in Kuwait, 12 of which were Iraqis in al-Dawa[1]. The bombing of the American embassy was an early instance of suicide bombing in the Middle East, following the examples that year of Hezbollah’s bombings of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon. [2]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Dawa_Party

Iraqi Dawa and Lebanese Hizbullah were “sister” organisations, but Dawa was the jiejie, Hizbullah the meimei- Iran being Big Mama, of course.

Life’s ironies- you start off blowing up American embassies; a couple of decades later the Americans are pushing for you to be made Prime Minister.

[TainanCowboy]

With freedom comes that sometimes troublesome ability to voice ones opinions.

[Juba]

How many more threads are we going to get out of “Israel attacks Lebanon”?

[Bodo]

Maybe this should be cut and pasted into one of the ones already going?

Dunno,
Bodo