Allawi: “As you know, the militias now are controlling the government”

[sabra]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20502632/site/newsweek/page/4/

<snip>

Allawi initially said the lobbying campaign was intended to prod the Bush administration to put “pressure” on the Iraqi government to “stabilize the country” and take more aggressive steps to achieve “reconciliation” between rival Shiites and Sunni factions. But his comments left little doubt that he did not believe Maliki’s government was interested or even capable of performing such a task. “As you know, the militias now are controlling the government,” said Allawi. “I don’t think the government is capable or willing or wanting to achieve proper reconciliation … We don’t have a country. The country is in chaos and it’s in the middle of a civil war … (Maliki) has been ruling for a year and a half … The government has not been able to do anything.”

A secular Shiite and former Baath Party member, Allawi left Iraq in the 1970s and became a prominent exile leader opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein. He set up the Iraqi National Accord, a London-based exile group, which received financial support from both the British Secret Intelligence Service (colloquially known as M.I.6) and the CIA. Over time, CIA officials pushed Allawi as a more acceptable and reliable potential successor to Saddam than Ahmed Chalabi, a rival Iraqi exile (and Allawi relative) whose ambitions to succeed Saddam were heavily promoted by neoconservative intellectuals and civilian Pentagon aides to former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

But Allawi, like Chalabi, was also linked to bogus pre-war intelligence about Saddam’s purported weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism. As NEWSWEEK reported, one of Allawi's previous Washington lobbyists once acknowledged that an associate of his group may have been responsible for feeding officials in the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair information—subsequently discredited—claiming that Saddam could launch WMD attacks on British troops in 45 minutes. The former lobbyist also confirmed that Allawi's group was also responsible for feeding the British media a document purporting to show that Muhammad Atta had undergone terrorist training in Baghdad a few months before he led the 9/11 attacks—a claim that was instantly ridiculed by official sources on both sides of the Atlantic.

[maddezmom]

1. it's been either the US military or the militias the entire time

[sabra]

2. and you know if Allawi gets back in power, Iraq will turn the corner...

:sarcasm:

[Supersedeas]

3. nothing to see here....feed them more stories of uplifting progress and Celebrity tribulations