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Democracy: Iraqi People/ Parliament/ Prime Minister Want US To Leave
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| Democracy: Iraqi People/ Parliament/ Prime Minister Want US To Leave
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| Ass Boil |
Quote:
Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout, Polls Show
Leaders' Views Out of Step With Public
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 27, 2006; A22
BAGHDAD, Sept. 26 -- A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.
In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.
Another new poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year. By large margins, though, Iraqis believed that the U.S. government would refuse the request, with 77 percent of those polled saying the United States intends keep permanent military bases in the country.
The stark assessments, among the most negative attitudes toward U.S.-led forces since they invaded Iraq in 2003, contrast sharply with views expressed by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Last week at the United Nations, President Jalal Talabani said coalition troops should remain in the country until Iraqi security forces are "capable of putting an end to terrorism and maintaining stability and security."
"Only then will it be possible to talk about a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq," he said.
Recent polls show many Iraqis in nearly every part of the country disagree.
"Majorities in all regions except Kurdish areas state that the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) should withdraw immediately, adding that the MNF-I's departure would make them feel safer and decrease violence," concludes the 20-page State Department report, titled "Iraq Civil War Fears Remain High in Sunni and Mixed Areas." The report was based on 1,870 face-to-face interviews conducted from late June to early July.
The Program on International Policy Attitudes poll, which was conducted over the first three days of September for WorldPublicOpinion.org, found that support among Sunni Muslims for a withdrawal of all U.S.-led forces within six months dropped to 57 percent in September from 83 percent in January.
"There is a kind of softening of Sunni attitudes toward the U.S.," said Steven Kull, director of PIPA and editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org. "But you can't go so far as to say the majority of Sunnis don't want the U.S. out. They do. They're just not quite in the same hurry as they were before."
The PIPA poll, which has a margin of error of 3 percent, was carried out by Iraqis in all 18 provinces who conducted interviews with more than 1,000 randomly selected Iraqis in their homes.
Using complex sampling methods based on data from Iraq's Planning Ministry, the pollsters selected streets on which to conduct interviews. They then contacted every third house on the left side of the road. When they selected a home, the interviewers then collected the names and birth dates of everyone who lived there and polled the person with the most recent birthday.
Matthew Warshaw, a senior research manager at D3 Systems, which helped conduct the poll, said he didn't think Iraqis were any less likely to share their true opinions with pollsters than Americans. "It's a concern you run up against in Iowa or in Iraq," he said. "But for the most part we're asking questions that people want to give answers to. People want to have their voice heard."
The greatest risk, he said, was the safety of the interviewers. Two pollsters for another Iraqi firm were recently killed because of their work.
The State Department report did not give a detailed methodology for its poll, which it said was carried out by an unnamed Iraqi polling firm. Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said he could not comment on the public opinion surveys.
The director of another Iraqi polling firm, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being killed, said public opinion surveys he conducted last month showed that 80 percent of Iraqis who were questioned favored an immediate withdrawal. Eight-five percent of Sunnis in that poll supported an immediate withdrawal, a number virtually unchanged in the past two years, except for the two months after the Samarra bombing, when the number fell to about 70 percent, the poll director said.
"The very fact that there is such a low support for American forces has to do with the American failure to do basically anything for Iraqis," said Mansoor Moaddel, a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, who commissioned a poll earlier this year that also found widespread support for a withdrawal. "It's part of human nature. People respect authority and power. But the U.S. so far has been unable to establish any real authority."
Interviews with two dozen Baghdad residents in recent weeks suggest one central cause for Iraqi distrust of the Americans: They believe the U.S. government has deliberately thrown the country into chaos.
The most common theory heard on the streets of Baghdad is that the American military is creating a civil war to create an excuse to keep its forces here.
"Do you really think it's possible that America -- the greatest country in the world -- cannot manage a small country like this?" Mohammad Ali, 42, an unemployed construction worker, said as he sat in his friend's electronics shop on a recent afternoon. "No! They have not made any mistakes. They brought people here to destroy Iraq, not to build Iraq."
As he drew on a cigarette and two other men in the store nodded in agreement, Ali said the U.S. government was purposely depriving the Iraqi people of electricity, water, gasoline and security, to name just some of the things that most people in this country often lack.
"They could fix everything in one hour if they wanted!" he said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis.
Mohammed Kadhem al-Dulaimi, 54, a Sunni Arab who used to be a professional soccer player, said he thought the United States was creating chaos in the country as a pretext to stay in Iraq as long as it has stayed in Germany.
"All bad things that are happening in Iraq are just because of the Americans," he said, sipping a tiny cup of sweet tea in a cafe. "When should they leave? As soon as possible. Every Iraqi will tell you this."
Many Iraqi political leaders, on the other hand, have been begging the Americans to stay, especially since the February bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, which touched off the current round of sectarian reprisal killings between Sunnis and Shiites.
The most dramatic about-face came from Sunni leaders, initially some of the staunchest opponents to the U.S. occupation, who said coalition forces were the only buffer preventing Shiite militias from slaughtering Sunnis.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the outspoken Sunni speaker of parliament who this summer said that "the U.S. occupation is the work of butchers," now supports the U.S. military staying in Iraq for as long as a decade.
"Don't let them go before they have corrected what they have done," he said in an interview this month. "They should stay for four years. This is the minimum. Maybe 10 years."
Particularly in mixed neighborhoods here in the capital, some Sunnis say the departure of U.S. forces could trigger a genocide. Hameed al-Kassi, 24, a recent college graduate who lives in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad, worried that rampages by Shiite militias could cause "maybe 60 to 70 percent of the Sunnis to be killed, even the women, old and the young."
"There will be lakes of blood," Kassi said. "Of course we want the Americans to leave, but if they do, it will be a great disaster for us."
In a barbershop in the capital's Karrada district Tuesday afternoon, a group of men discussed some of the paradoxical Iraqi opinions of coalition troops. They recognized that the departure of U.S.-led forces could trigger more violence, and yet they harbored deep-rooted anger toward the Americans.
"I really don't like the Americans who patrol on the street. They should all go away," said a young boy as he swept up hair on the shop's floor. "But I do like the one who guards my church. He should stay!"
Sitting in a neon-orange chair as he waited for a haircut, Firas Adnan, a 27-year-old music student, said: "I really don't know what I want. If the Americans leave right now, there is going to be a massacre in Iraq. But if they don't leave, there will be more problems. From my point of view, though, it would be better for them to go out today than tomorrow."
He paused for a moment, then said, "We just want to go back and live like we did before."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2601721_pf.html |
Quote:
Iraqi Lawmakers Pass Resolution That May Force End to Occupation
By Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on June 5, 2007, Printed on July 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/53230/
While most observers are focused on the U.S. Congress as it continues to issue new rubber stamps to legitimize Bush's permanent designs on Iraq, nationalists in the Iraqi parliament -- now representing a majority of the body -- continue to make progress toward bringing an end to their country's occupation.
The parliament today passed a binding resolution that will guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the U.N. mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq when it comes up for renewal in December. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose cabinet is dominated by Iraqi separatists, may veto the measure.
The law requires the parliament's approval of any future extensions of the mandate, which have previously been made by Iraq's prime minister. It is an enormous development; lawmakers reached in Baghdad today said that they do in fact plan on blocking the extension of the coalition's mandate when it comes up for renewal six months from now.
Reached today by phone in Baghdad, Nassar al Rubaie, the head of the Al-Sadr bloc in Iraq's Council of Representatives, said, "This new binding resolution will prevent the government from renewing the U.N. mandate without the parliament's permission. They'll need to come back to us by the end of the year, and we will definitely refuse to extend the U.N. mandate without conditions." Rubaie added: "There will be no such a thing as a blank check for renewing the U.N. mandate anymore, any renewal will be attached to a timetable for a complete withdrawal."
Without the cover of the U.N. mandate, the continued presence of coalition troops in Iraq would become, in law as in fact, an armed occupation, at which point it would no longer be politically tenable to support it. While polls show that most Iraqis consider U.S. forces to be occupiers rather than liberators or peacekeepers -- 92 percent of respondents said as much in a 2004 survey by the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies -- the U.N. mandate confers an aura of legitimacy on the continuing presence of foreign troops on Iraq's streets, even four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The resolution was initiated when a majority of Iraqi lawmakers signed a nonbinding legislative petition two weeks ago that called on the Iraqi government to demand a withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country.
While the issue of the Multinational Force's (MNF) mandate has been virtually ignored by the American media, it has been a point of fierce contention in Baghdad. Last fall, just after the midterm elections in the United States, a coalition of Iraqi nationalists in the parliament tried to attach conditions to the mandate's extension.
Iraqi lawmaker Jabir Habib (a Shia closely aligned with the al-Sadrist Movement) said in an interview last fall that the Iraqi Assembly had been poised to vote on the issue. "We spent the last months discussing the conditions we wanted to add to the mandate," he said, "and the majority of the parliament decided on three major conditions. These conditions included pulling the coalition forces out of the cities and transferring responsibility for security to the Iraqi government, giving Iraqis the right to recruit, train, equip and command the Iraqi security forces, and requiring that the U.N. mandate expire and be reviewed every six months instead of every 12 months."
Lawmakers said that while they likely had enough support to require a timetable for withdrawal as a condition of the mandate's renewal last year, they were sidelined by al-Maliki when the prime minister sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council requesting an extension without consulting members of parliament. The move outraged lawmakers.
In a phone interview just after the extension, Hassan al-Shammari, a Shia parliamentarian representing the al-Fadila party, said: "We had a closed session two days ago, and we were supposed to vote on the mandate in 10 days. I can not believe the mandate was just approved without our knowledge or input." Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni lawmaker, was also shocked when we spoke with him last fall. "This is totally unexpected," he said. "It is another example of the prime minister dismissing the views of the parliament and monopolizing all power."
Today's resolution means that Maliki will not be able to make that claim this time around. Reached by phone today in Amman, Jordan, following the vote, al-Mutlaq said: "The parliament is more powerful now -- we can block the renewal of the U.N. mandate and demand to attach a timetable to it."
Iraq's government faces a crisis of legitimacy, in large part due to its refusal to demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces long favored by as many as four out of five Iraqis. According to a poll last year by the Project on International Policy Attitudes, 80 percent of Iraqis believe the U.S. plans to maintain permanent military bases in the country and three out of four believe that if their government were to demand a timetable for withdrawal, Washington would ignore it (according to the poll's authors, that finding was a major driver of the significant support among all groups of Iraqis for attacking coalition troops).
It is possible, even probable, that the Maliki regime will veto the resolution passed today. The White House's separatist allies in Baghdad have consistently found ways to bypass the assembly. Al Mutlaq said today that the nationalist bloc probably doesn't have the the two-thirds majority required to override a veto.
He warned, however, that the more the al-Maliki regime does to sideline the Iraqi parliament, the more Iraqis will be compelled to turn to violent resistance to the occupation. He said: "It will lead to many groups withdrawing from the political process and could only make things even worse."
The resolution passed today is only one part of the nationalists' effort to bring about a U.S. withdrawal. Nassar al Rubaie said of the measure's passage: "All of this is just our backup plan, but our other and more specific resolution setting a timetable will come soon." He promised that nationalists in parliament would force debate on a "clean" and binding resolution requiring occupation forces to withdrawal from the country in the immediate future. "We'll start the deliberations next week," he said. "We have enough signatures for that one already."
Raed Jarrar is Iraq consultant to the American Friends Service Committee. He blogs at Raed in the Middle. Joshua Holland is a senior writer at AlterNet.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/53230/ |
Quote:
Iraqi PM: Troops can leave 'any time they want'
BAGHDAD (AP) — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government's military and political progress on Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave "any time they want."
One of his top aides, meanwhile, accused the United States of embarrassing the Iraqi government by violating human rights and treating his country like an "experiment in a U.S. lab."
Al-Maliki sought to display confidence at a time when pressure is mounting in Congress for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces. On Thursday, the House passed a measure calling for the U.S. to withdraw its troops by spring, hours after the White House reported mixed progress by the Iraqi government toward meeting 18 benchmarks.
During a press conference, al-Maliki shrugged off the progress report, saying that difficulty in enacting the reforms was "natural" given Iraq's turmoil.
"We are not talking about a government in a stable political environment but one in the shadow of huge challenges," al-Maliki said. "So when we talk about the presence of some negative points in the political process, that's fairly natural."
Al-Maliki said his government needs "time and effort" to enact the political reforms that Washington seeks — "particularly since the political process is facing security, economic and services pressures, as well as regional and international interference."
But he said if necessary, Iraqi police and soldiers could fill the void left by the departure of coalition forces.
"We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want," he said.
One of al-Maliki's close advisers, Shiite lawmaker Hassan al-Suneid, bristled over the American pressure, telling The Associated Press that "the situation looks as if it is an experiment in an American laboratory (judging) whether we succeed or fail."
He sharply criticized the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations and embarrassing the Iraqi government through such tactics as building a wall around Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah and launching repeated raids on suspected Shiite militiamen in the capital's slum of Sadr City.
He also criticized U.S. overtures to Sunni groups in Anbar and Diyala provinces, encouraging former insurgents to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. "These are gangs of killers," he said.
In addition, he said that al-Maliki has problems with the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, who he said works along a "purely American vision."
"There are disagreements that the strategy that Petraeus is following might succeed in confronting al-Qaeda in the early period but it will leave Iraq an armed nation, an armed society and militias," al-Suneid said.
Al-Suneid's comments were a rare show of frustration toward the Americans from within al-Maliki's inner circle as the prime minister struggles to overcome deep divisions between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish members of his coalition and enact the U.S.-drawn list of benchmarks.
But the U.S. focus on the benchmarks has rankled the deep sense of Iraqi pride, even among those who share the goals set forth by the Americans.
U.S. forces have been waging intensified security crackdowns in Baghdad and areas to the north and south for nearly a month. The goal is to bring calm to the capital while al-Maliki enacts the political reforms, intended to give Sunni Arabs a greater role in the government and political process, lessening support for the insurgency.
But the benchmarks have been blocked by divisions among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders. In August, the parliament is taking a one-month vacation — a shorter break than the usual two months, but still enough to anger some in Congress who say lawmakers should push through reforms while American soldiers are dying.
Two more American soldiers were killed Saturday in bombings in the Baghdad area, the U.S. military reported. One of the bombs used was an explosively formed penetrator — high-tech devices that the U.S. military believes are smuggled from Iran. The Iranians deny the charge.
In other violence, a car bomb leveled a two-story apartment building and a suicide bomber plowed his explosives-packed vehicle into a line of cars at a gas station. The two attacks killed at least eight people, police said.
Also Saturday, the U.S. military said it captured an alleged high-level al-Qaeda in Iraq cell leader at Baghdad's international airport. The suspect, believed to have organized mortar and roadside bomb attacks in the capital and nearby area, surrendered "without a struggle," the military said in a statement.
It did not give details on the suspect or say whether he was traveling in or out of the country when seized.
The Reuters news agency said one of its Iraqi translators was shot to death in Baghdad on Wednesday along with two of his brothers, apparent victims of sectarian death squads. He was the third employee of the news agency killed in Baghdad this week.
An Iraqi reporter for The New York Times, Khalid W. Hassan, was killed by gunmen Friday as he drove to work in southern Baghdad.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/...eminister_N.htm |
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| fastfingersfunk |
ALLAH AKBAR!!! THANK YOU FOR YOU CONTINUED SUPPORT OF LEAVING THE MIDEAST AND LETTING US GROW STRONGER!!! |
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| Fdubya247 |
Quote: Originally posted by fastfingersfunk
ALLAH AKBAR!!! THANK YOU FOR YOU CONTINUED SUPPORT OF LEAVING THE MIDEAST AND LETTING US GROW STRONGER!!! |
Like in Anbar, Cunt? Ask TheTurd. He'll tell ya... |
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| Ass Boil |
Quote: Originally posted by fatfingeredfuck
ALLAH AKBAR!!! THANK YOU FOR YOU CONTINUED SUPPORT OF LEAVING THE MIDEAST AND LETTING US GROW STRONGER!!! |
Why do you hate Democracy?
The Iraqis have spoken. |
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| otherone4life |
| Vacate ..define victory ..GO. |
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| Fdubya247 |
Quote: Originally posted by otherone4life
Vacate ..define victory ..GO. |
He already has.
:rolleyes:
Quote: Originally posted by Fdub
Quote: Originally posted by Vacate(TheTurd)
Simple - We'll win in Iraq once Iraq, as a nation, is in a position to govern, sustain and defend itself and is an ally in the war against terror. |
You mean like Saddam's Iraq, pre-Bush invasion and occupation?!?!? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Thanks for exposing your own ignorance yet again, cockroach!!!
*FLUSH*
:crapper:
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:lol: |
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| fatboy |
| Bush43 knows best. We'd better stay until we can pump out the very last drop of Iraqi oil. It's the only way to make sure. |
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| VacateTheWord |
Quote: Originally posted by otherone4life
Vacate ..define victory ..GO. |
1. Defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq.
2. Quelling the sectarian violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas so that the Iraqi Government can achieve political reconciliations and provide a democratic alternative to the tyrrany that Al Qaeda and other terror elements seek to establish.
3. Standing up the Iraqi Armed Forces so that they can provide security to their people and fight terror.
Now, defend cut and run.
GO.
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| mingmen |
Quote: Originally posted by VacateTheWord
1. Defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq.
2. Quelling the sectarian violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas so that the Iraqi Government can achieve political reconciliations and provide a democratic alternative to the tyrrany that Al Qaeda and other terror elements seek to establish.
3. Standing up the Iraqi Armed Forces so that they can provide security to their people and fight terror.
Now, defend cut and run.
GO.
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I am glad "go" is back.
Cut and run is your term.
Fact is, we are never leaving Iraq, Doofus. We could at least position ourselves to save some face.
Or you are fine with bankrupting our country for no strategic advantage?
Wait...don't answer that :p |
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| mingmen |
Quote: Originally posted by fatboy
Bush43 knows best. We'd better stay until we can pump out the very last drop of Iraqi oil. It's the only way to make sure. |
That is not on the schedule until it hits $100 a barrel. |
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| Calistan |
Quote: Originally posted by VacateTheWord
1. Defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq.
2. Quelling the sectarian violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas so that the Iraqi Government can achieve political reconciliations and provide a democratic alternative to the tyrrany that Al Qaeda and other terror elements seek to establish.
3. Standing up the Iraqi Armed Forces so that they can provide security to their people and fight terror.
Now, defend cut and run.
GO.
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Maybe you should GO.
I'm sure they could use your help. |
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| mingmen |
Quote: Originally posted by Calistan
Maybe you should GO.
I'm sure they could use your help. |
He can fill in for Tony Snow :p |
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| harley-davidson |
Quote: Originally posted by VacateTheWord
1. Defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq.
2. Quelling the sectarian violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas so that the Iraqi Government can achieve political reconciliations and provide a democratic alternative to the tyrrany that Al Qaeda and other terror elements seek to establish.
3. Standing up the Iraqi Armed Forces so that they can provide security to their people and fight terror.
Now, defend cut and run.
GO.
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:lol:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-b...-t_b_56676.html
Any questions ? |
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| VacateTheWord |
Typical.
Lots of insults, a few deflections, but you ask Liberals how cutting and running (or whatever you want to call it) is a wise strategy in the War on Terror and that's what you get...a whole lot of nothing.
Keep supporting a "strategy" that you are completely incapable of defending, Liberals. Two thumbs up! |
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| mingmen |
Quote: Originally posted by VacateTheWord
Typical
.
Lots of insults, a few deflections, but you ask Liberals how cutting and running (or whatever you want to call it) is a wise strategy in the War on Terror and that's what you get...a whole lot of nothing.
Keep supporting a "strategy" that you are completely incapable of defending, Liberals. Two thumbs up! |
there are no options left after operation cheney/rummy
what are you gonna do? |
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