Bush's incompetent diplomacy with Israel/Lebanon spills over into Iraq

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August 4, 2006, 9:44 AM

Shiites stage massive rally in Baghdad
Hundreds of thousands voice support for Hezbollah, denounce Israel, U.S.

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq // Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" marched through the streets of Baghdad's biggest Shiite district today in a show of support for Hezbollah militants battling Israeli troops in Lebanon.

Al-Sadr summoned followers from throughout the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq to converge on Baghdad for the rally but he did not attend.

Demonstrators, wearing white burial shrouds symbolizing their willingness to die for Hezbollah, waved the group's yellow banner and chanted slogans in support of its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who has attained a cult status in the Arab world for his defiance of Israel.

"Allah, Allah, give victory to Hassan Nasrallah," the crowd chanted.

"Mahdi Army and Hezbollah are one. Let them confront us if they dare," the predominantly male crowd shouted, waving the flags of Hezbollah, Lebanon and Iraq.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-iraq0804,0,6250223.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

[bronxiteforever]

1. This is what happens when the President is unfit for the office

in times of peril and change. A dumb and arrogant frat boy uninterested in knowledge is leading the Republic. It is hard to believe he sits in the seat once occupied by Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, JFK. He couldn't tie their shoes.

[sam sarrha]

8. he is mentally ill, and the drugs they are giving him aren' helping, i bet

the biggest national security secret is in the toilet after he urinates..

i also bet there is a team that bleaches that toilet after he uses it, and his skivvies before they go to laundry,.. wouldn't want a foreign or domestic journalist finding out what what anti psychotic drug/s he is taking.

[rodeodance]

2. this has been boiling for the last 3 weeks.

[bigtree]

5. I don't have any doubt that most of this protest is contrived

It may be the smart thing for Sadr to allow an open venting of the anger and frustration many there must feel.

The worry is that there will be this continued fumbling which allows elements room to exploit the resentments into support for their own muckraking violence. The pattern of attacks and reprisals has to be interrupted by the party most concerned with ending the cycle of violence. It remains to be seen whether either Bush or any faction of Shia are interested in turning their focus and supporters away from violence and toward reconciliation. That's still possible. There's still an opportunity for Bush to step away from Iraq and encourage the Shia in believing in the political process that Sadr led them to and away from the bloody confrontations.

[SutaUvaca]

3. I foresee an irony.

The three future countries (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd) that we currently refer to as Iraq, band together as the first nations who bring formal charges of war crimes against * and his cronies.

[Mandate My Ass]

4. Why do they ever use the word diplomacy? Really.

The Bush cabal never talks to anybody except those who absolutely genuflect before their arrogant, war-mongering, neocon plots to rule the ME and plunder its resources at the expense of its people. That's not diplomacy, it's not even dialogue, it's self-congratulatory stroking.

[Toots]

6. They talk "down to" not to everybody

They never listen to anybody but they talk down to everybody. The entire world is getting sick of these arrogant incompetents. I suspect they will be defeated politically I can only hope they will also pay for their crimes as well.

[Mandate My Ass]

10. Oh I know. And it's long past time somebody said to them

for a group of people who have so effed up everything you've touched since you got into office, STFU. I was referring to Condi's "shuttle" to the ME where she talked to Israeli and European leaders but Syria wasn't invited and the Lebanese weren't even at the table.

[rodeodance]

7. "The neocons' next war" good read.

>
>
> The neocons' next war


> By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.
>
> By Sidney Blumenthal
>
> Aug. 03, 2006 | The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.
>
> Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.
>
> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been "briefed" and to be "on board," but she is not a central actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario. Her "briefing" appears to be an aspect of an internal struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.
>
> Rice's diplomacy in the Middle East has erratically veered from initially calling on Israel for "restraint," to categorically opposing a cease-fire, to proposing terms for a cease-fire guaranteed to conflict with the European proposal, and thus to thwarting diplomacy, prolonging the time available for the Israeli offensive to achieve its stated aim of driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. But the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran, says the national security official, which somehow will redeem Bush's beleaguered policy in the entire region.

[The Magistrate]

9. This Entire Episode, Sir

May prove the beginning of the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

That occupation rests, in the final analysis, on the acquiesence of the Shia Arab populace to the U.S. presence, which in turn rests on the understanding of the most prestigious Shia leaders that the U.S. is serving, objectively, as their lead combat element against the Sunni Arab in the civil war that has long since commenced in that country, and that when the U.S. eventually leaves, it will be turning Iraq over to the Shia Arabs to do with as they will. It is, from the point of view of careful and canny men like Ay. Sistani, a wise and subtle policy likely to succeed with a minimum of bloodshed all around.

But the passions aroused by events in Lebanon, and the natural sympathy of the Shia Arabs for their co-religionists there, present an extraordinary danger to this unstated and temporary mutuality of interests. With the exception of only a very few incidents, Shia Arab militias have so far devoted their energies only to the killing of Sunni Arabs, and the "purification" of their own people, in regards to things like liquor stores and "loose" women. If these should change their focus in any great degree to attacks on U.S. forces, the situation of the latter would become hugely more difficult.

Further, the very exercise in puppetry we are pleased to call the government of Iraq today is a largely Shia Arab institution, and the great bulk of uniformed men with guns it employs are Shia Arabs, many of them also members of various militia bodies. The Premier we have installed is of a political party that has close ties to the origins of Hezbollah. When likely personal inclination is backed by the spectacle of public passion on a similar course, the result can be expected to be volatile. The institutions the U.S. has created to its own purposes could easily come to turn against their patrons, knowing that course would have tremendous popular support.

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11. I can't believe the Bush regime expected the Shia majority they got

They thought Sistani was going to step up and moderate, perhaps lean against Iran, maybe assume leadership there after they forced some sort of regime change there after an attack. Instead, Sistani retreated to the background and Sadr took advantage of Bush's need for a hurried, 'inclusive' election. Sadr obliged by leading his followers to the polls.

The damning little secret about the course Bush has taken in Iraq is that it has animated the fears and resentments against America, our agents, and our interests to the degree that every instigation of democracy has lead the participants to opt for the candidates who promise resistance to those U.S. elements of interference. That's true around the world where 'democracy' is 'spreading.'

We really have no choice but to let Sadr's influence prevail, for the time being. If we continue to try to manipulate Iraq to fit the U.S. mold, we will only aggravate the resentments and further encourage and animate resistance, further elevating those who would exploit that resentment.

These 'institutions' will turn. I think the question is how far, and to what end will the leaders be compelled to use their positions of authority.

[The Magistrate]

12. Indeed, Sir

If one adopts a cold-blooded view in real-politik style, democracy is the last thing any U.S. government should seek to foster in the Near East. It is only the presence of autocrats with a clear focus on their own self-interest and the capacity to ignore the will of those they rule on most points of policy that alows the U.S. any peaceable intercourse with the region at all. The present regime has certainly aggravated this, but it a great and old fact in place for decades. These people now in charge, for all their self-promotion as "adults" and "realists" and "hard-boiled sons of bitches" seem to operate on a comic-book level of understanding, only occassionally rising even to the level of a Tom Clancy pot-boiler. It is hard to escape the conclusion they actually believe their propagandas, and are gebnuinely surprised at the continued resistance of reality to their illusions and self-deceptions.