By responding to Washington's call to arms, Nouri al-Maliki will be seen in Iraq as the tool of a deeply unpopular occupation
March 28, 2008 8:30 PM
Sami Ramadani
... If the US vice president, Dick Cheney, fresh from a visit to Baghdad in the days before the biggest troop deployment of the US-trained Iraqi armed forces, doesn't phone the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to demand a hasty retreat, then Iraq is heading for a major uprising ...
Maliki declared on Thursday that there will be no negotiations and that he was leading the Iraqi forces in a battle to the finish. An elated George Bush gave Maliki his full support - the "kiss of death", as one Baghdad resident put it. Maliki and British officers strove to portray the Basra operation as the independent decision of the Iraqi government. That was quickly proved to be wishful thinking as US planes flew to the rescue of government forces. Bombing missions included Basra, Hilla, Nassiriya and Baghdad. Hundreds, and, some report, thousands, of people are believed to have been killed or injured.
Within 48 hours of the initial assault, many of Iraq's southern cities were visibly controlled by the Mahdi Army. More alarmingly still for Maliki's "charge of the knights" operation, many areas of Baghdad were not only staging protest marches but were evidently controlled by Sadr supporters, joined by various anti-occupation allies.
Yesterday, Maliki was forced to extend the deadline to ten days and to loosen the curfew in Basra to allow access to food and water. He even offered payments to those handing in their arms. He must have been shocked to see how swiftly hundreds of thousands of people answered Sadr's call to protest the Basra siege. Placards were brandished declaring him "the new dictator" ...
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sami_ramadani/2008/03/a_great_leap_backward.html
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