The Election Alternative in Iraq’s

August 7, 2008

McClatchy: Iraqi parliament adjourns without setting elections

The failure to pass the law, which would govern elections in provinces across the country, may push the elections into next year. If elections don’t happen by the end of this year, it could be July before the balloting could be carried out, U.N. spokesman Said Arikat said.

For possibly another year huge parts of the Iraqi society will lack representation in the power mix and the billion dollar gravy train that comes with representation.

As these groups have no chance to express their political will through elections for another year, the may revisit the alternative and again resort to violence.

Such groups are:

Sunni ‘Awakening’ groups in Anwar
Turkomen and Arabs in Kirkuk
Sadr’s proletarian Shia constituency
refugees in and outside of Iraq

The Iraqi parliament members will now take their undeserved vacation in London, Dubai or wherever and the people will swelter in the Iraqi sun and think about ways and means to change the situation.

Some will certainly come up with interesting but bloody ideas.

Posted by b on August 7, 2008 at 14:38 UTC | Permalink

Comments

“The Iraqi parliament members will now take their undeserved vacation in London”
And perhaps the 79 billion dollar budget surplus will go on vacation with them! Iraq has sure learned from the Cheney administration!

Posted by: Diogenes | Aug 7 2008 17:09 utc | 1

Real or not?
Two Iraqi officials say the U.S. and Iraq are close to a deal under which all American combat troops would leave by October 2010 with remaining U.S. forces gone about three years later.
A U.S. official in Washington acknowledges progress has been made on the timelines for a U.S. departure but offered no firm date. Another U.S. official strongly suggested the 2010 date may be too ambitious.

Posted by: b | Aug 7 2008 18:07 utc | 2

b
this is one of those infinite never ending departures that are not departures. the only way the u s forces will leave will be through violence; they are not going to leave by political aprroaches alone
tho the western press has tried tto sell the story of silence in iraq – all the evidence suggests otherwise – & at one point or another in the very near future either one or all the groups are going to step up their actions

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 7 2008 18:14 utc | 3

Read a financial last night that Iraqi parliament can’t spend their oil revenues fast enough, with a burn rate of only $67B per year, and no, or little, infrastructure spending, just salaries, goods and services and armored SUVs. Guess a lot of that $67B is smoked as “security services”.
On that basis, Bush and Cheney have MISSION ACCOMPLISHED to crow about!
Planned supply destruction of lowest production cost crude oil on earth,
and now permanent $70B a year security overhead, just on administration.
Imagine what NeoZi.con’s could do if Netanyahu stages his Zionist coup?
That’s starting to sound a lot like Wall Street’s solution.
Can you imagine just 90 days from now, and that passes in an augenblik
Ja, das Hokey Cokey
Ja, das Hokey Cokey
Ja, das Hokey Cokey
Knien geborgen, Arme gestrecht,
Ra ra ra.

Posted by: Cherry Picker | Aug 7 2008 19:00 utc | 4

According to Beth Ann Hughes “hokey cokey” comes from “hocus pocus”, the traditional magician’s incantation which in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc enim est corpus meum – “this is my body” – the words of consecration accompanying the elevation of the host at Eucharist, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation takes place – mocked by Puritans and others as a form of “magic words”. The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, West Yorkshire, says that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass.[2] The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the Latin words nor see clearly his movements.
“Magic Words”? Dancing with back to audience? That’s Cheney, alright!
That’s the whole magical-thinking bad-faith-based NeoZi.con Eucharist.

Posted by: Kick Cheney | Aug 7 2008 19:07 utc | 5

at one point or another in the very near future either one or all the groups are going to step up their actions
nov 5th? remember falluja

Posted by: annie | Aug 8 2008 3:06 utc | 6

Jim Hoagland, i.e. mouth of some parts of the Bush administration, has some details on the SOFA:

The negotiating teams then went back to work on a set of documents, which includes a memorandum of understanding, a strategic framework statement and various side agreements. Together, these documents will constitute what some U.S. officials characterize as a “lite” version of the typical status-of-forces agreement.
This collective accord will recognize Iraq’s sovereignty over its territory, which is currently constrained by U.N. Security Council resolutions that govern the presence of foreign forces in Iraq. But the new agreements will also recognize implicitly that Iraq is unlikely to be able to defend its own borders, operate its own air traffic control, provide logistics for its own military forces or run its own prison system anytime soon. Iraq will delegate many of its nominal powers back to U.S. forces “temporarily” under these provisions.
Similar waivers and delegations will ensure that U.S. military personnel are not subject to Iraqi jurisdiction and will provide some limited protection for civilian contractors, depending on what duties they perform and for whom.
…
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which dominates the Shiite regions of southern Iraq, is terminally ill and close to death, according to Iraqi sources. Moqtada al-Sadr has lost control over his Shiite movement, and a collective leadership is being formed to replace him. (Moreover, President Jalal Talabani is in the United States for treatment at the Mayo Clinic for an undisclosed illness that is not life-threatening.)

Posted by: b | Aug 8 2008 6:30 utc | 7

Hoagland’s op-ed is the line the White House has been playing since June – warm, everything’s going hunky-dory, Maliki’s just about to sign, we’ve had to make a few insignificant concessions, but hey, that’s diplomacy.
The other WP story from AP, which is cited by Badger, is quite different, and puts another cast on the negotiations, as much of it comes from the Iraqi side.

Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that, two Iraqi officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. U.S. officials, however, insisted no dates had been agreed.

Even in that single point, there’s still a wide divide, as, of course, the US is not actually planning to withdraw, and aspirational statements about withdrawal is the language being used to express that.

Posted by: Alex | Aug 8 2008 8:13 utc | 8

link to WaPo
This is fun: it gives a whole new perspective on the success of the “surge”; it tells us how Americans manage to stay alive in Iraq, and it helps us foresee the extent to which America’s mission in Iraq will arrive at a predictable outcome.

Posted by: alabama | Aug 11 2008 5:46 utc | 9

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