Allawi list refuses to join Iraqi cabinet without five posts

[Barrett808]

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's list announced it would not join a new Iraqi government without four cabinet posts and a slot of deputy premier, said the head of Allawi's negotiating team.

"These are our demands and if they are not satisfied, we cannot participate in the government," Rasem Awady said at a news conference with other negotiators from the Iraqiya list.

The list has 40 seats in the parliament elected in January 30 elections, since when prime minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari has struggled for weeks to form a government.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050422/wl_mideast_afp/iraqpoliticsallawi

[Roland99]

1. See ya!!

[Barrett808]

2. Not gonna happen

The word of the day is "purge".

[Barrett808]

3. See the excellent essay by Pepe Escobar at Asia Times

Don't touch our thugs

According to Washington's script, progressive invisibility of the occupying force means increasing repression exercised by Iraqi forces. This means the return - in full force - of Saddam's Mukhabarat agents, now posing as agents of the new Iraqi security and intelligence services. Seemingly, that is the way the disenfranchised Muqtada-regimented masses see it: Bush equals Saddam because the same people who repressed us are back. Not to mention that everyone painfully remembers how George Bush senior did nothing to prevent Saddam from smashing the Shi'ite uprising at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. The masses correctly interpreted the meaning of Rumsfeld's "message" to the Shi'ite al-Jafaari: don't touch the defense and interior ministries, ie, don't touch our old Mukhabarat allies and counterinsurgency experts.

Not featured in the elaborate Pentagon plans to regiment Mukhabarat agents is that these same Sunni, Saddam-era operatives may not be exactly inclined to fight the Sunni resistance. To complicate the equation, 70% of the US-trained Iraqi security forces are former Ba'athists. The top commando, with 10,000 operatives, is almost 100% composed of former Saddam army officers. If Jaafari's government purges them, it's the end of the American dream of having Iraqis doing the dirty jobs.

(more)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=120921&mesg_id=120921

[leftchick]

4. Pepe does it again...

He is one of the best. Thank you for the link...

~snip~

Made in the shade
There may be no funds for rebuilding American-bombed Iraqi infrastructure, but US$4.5 billion promptly found its way to Halliburton's subsidiary KBR for the construction and maintenance of the 14 "enduring camps" or permanent military bases. The most notorious of these may be Camp Victory North, a sprawling complex attached to Baghdad (former Saddam) International Airport. Camp Victory is a KBR-built, bungalow-with-air-con American city for 14,000, complete with Burger King and gym. When finished, it will be twice the size of giant Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, the base attached to surveillance of oil pipelines in the Balkans.

American economist Jeremy Rifkin has calculated the number of years known world oil reserves would last at current rates of consumption and extraction. In the US it would be only 10 years. By contrast, in Iran it would be 53 years; in Saudi Arabia 55; in the United Arab Emirates 75; in Kuwait 116; and in Iraq no less than 526 years. That says it all about controlling oil reserves in the Middle East.

Nothing gets done in Iraq without Green Zone approval, ie the all-powerful American Embassy. The overwhelming majority of Sunnis as well as many disgruntled Shi'ites who sympathize with the Sadrists know the Green Zone would never tolerate new Iraqi ministers not pliable to the White House/Pentagon military/corporate agenda for Iraq.

[thebigidea]

5. uh huh. the puppets that got almost no votes make demands

I suppose the Dems should've been demanding 5 cabinet spots too.

[PurityOfEssence]

6. Buh-bye

The Shiites must be laughing.