"I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. "Well, there's so much to live for!" "Like what?" "Well... are you religious?" He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" "Christian." "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ? "Protestant." "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" "Baptist" "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" "Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?" "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?" He said,"Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off." Emo Phillips
Dear Arthur,
It has been two days since U.S. troops left Iraq.
I am appending a New York Times article (12/20/12) entitled “Arrest Order for Sunni Leader in Iraq Opens New Rift” - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/middleeast/iraqi-government-accuses-top-official-in-assassinations.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
In brief:
1.) Iran won The Iraq War.
2.) Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. (And quite likely worse.)
Will the new National Defense Authorization Act have similar results here in the United States? http://www.forbes.com/
At minimum, we might ask: "Why these extraordinary powers?
And, why now?
Already, Gingrich is "on record" for his willingness to arrest federal judges "under suspicion" of progressivism. http://www.
Can't happen here?
Pax on both houses
Alan
Arrest Order for Sunni Leader in Iraq Opens New Rift
Mr. Maliki has tightened his grip on Iraq by marginalizing, intimidating or arresting political rivals.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, second from left, and Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, second from right, in Baghdad in February 2011.
By JACK HEALY
Published: December 19, 2011
On Monday, Iraqi television showed bodyguards for Mr. Hashimi confessing to running death squads and planting bombs.
Readers’ Comment:
The sensational charges drew a worried response from Washington and brought Iraq’s tenuous partnership government to the edge of collapse. A major Sunni-backed political coalition said its ministers would walk off their jobs, leaving adrift agencies that handle Iraq’s finances, schools and agriculture.The accusations against Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi also underlined fears that Iraq’s leaders may now be using the very institutions America has spent millions of dollars trying to strengthen — the police, the courts, the media — as a cudgel to batter their political enemies and consolidate power.
On Monday night, Mr. Hashimi was in the northern semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, beyond the reach of security forces controlled by Baghdad. It was unclear when — or if — he would return to Baghdad.
In Washington, where officials have been quietly celebrating the end of the war, Obama administration officials sounded alarmed about the arrest order for Mr. Hashimi. “We are talking to all of the parties and expressed our concern regarding these developments,” said Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman. “We are urging all sides to work to resolve differences peacefully and through dialogue, in a manner consistent with the rule of law and the democratic political process.”
The breakdown in relations between Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and Mr. Hashimi and his Iraqiya Party arrived at an inopportune moment for the administration, coming so close to the troop withdrawal. American officials have spent years trying to urge Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government to work with the country’s Sunni minority, and are wary of having things fall apart now.
Mr. Obama said last week, in remarks welcoming troops back to Fort Bragg, N.C., that Iraq’s future would now be “in the hands of the Iraqi people.” But having removed its combat troops, it was unclear whether the United States retained enough influence to limit sectarian tensions that some analysts say could drag the country back into the chaos and violence of past years and even split it along geographical lines.
The government made its case against Mr. Hashimi in a half-hour television broadcast that was as aggressively promoted as a prime-time special. In grainy video confessions, three men said they had committed murders on Mr. Hashimi’s behalf. They said they had blown up cars, attacked convoys with silenced pistols and were rewarded with envelopes containing $3,000 in American bills.
To government critics, the charges seemed to be part of a wide-reaching consolidation of power by Mr. Maliki. Amid the anxiety stirred by the American departure and unrest in neighboring Syria, Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, has tightened his grip on this violent and divided nation by marginalizing, intimidating or arresting his political rivals, many of whom are part of Iraq’s Sunni minority.
Hundreds of people have been swept up over the last two months in arrests aimed at former members of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party. In recent weeks, security forces also arrested at least 30 people connected to a former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and caustic critic of Mr. Maliki, according to Mr. Allawi’s office. And on Sunday, Mr. Maliki asked Parliament to issue a vote of no confidence in his own deputy, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni prone to hyperbole who had compared Mr. Maliki to a dictator in an interview.
“Any leading Sunni politician seems now to be a target of this campaign by Maliki,” said Reidar Visser, an expert on Iraqi politics. “It seems that every Sunni Muslim or secularist is in danger of being labeled either a Baathist or a terrorist.”
Mr. Hashimi has not often been described as either. Sometimes abrasive and always self-interested, he was one of the first Sunni leaders to embrace the political process after the American invasion, and lost three siblings to terrorist attacks during the height of the sectarian war.
“He was someone who tried to be conciliatory with the Shiite Islamists at a time when others did not do so,” Mr. Visser said. “Now, Maliki is going after him.”
An aide to Mr. Hashimi denounced the charges as a witch hunt. “This is a coup over all partners, on political process, on the Constitution,” said the aide, who identified himself only as Abu Aya. “This is the new dictatorship.”
Any resolution seems a distant hope. The Iraqiya coalition, a large political bloc led by Mr. Allawi that includes Mr. Hashimi, Mr. Mutlaq and many other prominent Sunnis, stopped attending sessions of Parliament on Saturday. On Monday, there were not enough lawmakers to reach a quorum, so Parliament was adjourned until Jan. 3.
On Monday night, Iraqiya members called for the president of Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, to intervene and reprise a role the Kurds played in bringing together discordant factions and helping to resolve the long stalemate that collapsed after last year’s national elections.
The recent tumult has put Baghdad’s political elite on edge.
Inside the concrete-ringed Green Zone, the heart of Iraq’s government and home to the American Embassy, Iraqi Army tanks and Humvees have proliferated. Freshly reinforced platoons of soldiers are standing guard over intersections, and security forces have pushed to the edge of the compounds of Mr. Hashimi and other Sunni leaders.
“It’s crisis after crisis,” Mr. Mutlaq, the deputy prime minister, said in an interview. “None of the political parties want Maliki to be in this position anymore, but Maliki is controlling everything. Through his police, his army, his security measures. Everyone is afraid.”
After days spent hinting at the allegations against Mr. Hashimi, the Iraqi government chose a familiar platform to formally make its case: the televised confession. It played three confessions from Mr. Hashimi’s guards, and promised more in the days to come.
Their statements were rich with dates and names, but it was impossible to verify any of the details or to know whether security forces had used threats or force to extract information. In June, Amnesty International said Iraq’s use of televised confessions “seriously undermines the right to a fair trial.”
In the first, a man who identifies himself as Abdul Karim Mohammed al-Jabouri said that he had been working as a bodyguard for Mr. Hashimi for a few years when the vice president approached him about some dangerous but important new work. Mr. Jabouri said he signed on.
He said he would then receive orders from one of Mr. Hashimi’s subordinates. He and other guards would get a call telling them to pick up an improvised bomb from Mr. Hashimi’s offices and plant it in a busy traffic circle. Other times, they were told to assassinate an official in the Foreign Ministry using silenced pistols.
After one bombing, Mr. Jabouri said, he returned to Mr. Hashimi’s offices.
“The vice president called us and he thanked us,” Mr. Jabouri said. “He gave us an envelope with money, and I thanked him.”
Abu Aya, the Hashimi aide, said on Monday night that the men in the video confessions appeared to be guards who worked in the vice president’s office. Some 10 guards for Mr. Hashimi have been arrested in the last week, according to officials with Mr. Hashimi, the government and security forces, and on Monday morning, Iraq’s high court barred Mr. Hashimi from leaving the country as the terrorism allegations were investigated.
At the end of the broadcast, Gen. Adel Daham, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, waved a white sheet of paper in front of a bank of microphones. It was the arrest warrant for Mr. Hashimi, he said, signed by five judges.
“It is clear in front of you,” he said.
Zaid Thaker contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Helene Cooper from Washington.
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