Iraq Decides It Still Needs U.S.-Led Military Presence
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, June 10 — The new government of Iraq has decided to postpone any demand for negotiations to establish a more formal legal basis for the presence of American and other foreign troops on its soil, Iraqi and American officials said this week.
Instead, these officials said, Iraq will allow the current United Nations mandate to remain in effect beyond a deadline next Thursday for a review of Security Council Resolution 1637, which provides legal authority for the American-led military coalition to continue its combat operations.
“I’ve just finished speaking with my foreign minister, who intends to be in New York for the review, and it will not be a point at which we terminate,” Samir al-Sumaidaie, Iraq’s new ambassador to the United States, said Friday. The new government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is the first full-term government to take power in Iraq since the American invasion more than three years ago.
Iraq has the right to unilaterally end the United Nations troops mandate at any time, as spelled out in the resolution approved unanimously by the Security Council last Nov. 8.
If the Iraqi people were polled, how many would know their government has no problem with the U.S. conducting business as usual, i.e., investigating itself and not liable for its actions? A “senior Bush administration official said” there is now “a great deal of support, obviously, and enhanced by what happened yesterday, for our continued presence,”… referring to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” What do Iraqis say?
What they can look forward to are investigations of the sort Israel conducted into the Gaza Beach shelling in which they’ve determined it was the result of a bomb planted by Hamas. According to this report, the government is now concentrating its efforts on convincing the public that the IDF’s “findings” are true, as it continues firing missiles into heavily populated areas with no concern whatsoever for civilian casualties.
As’ad AbuKhalil wrote on 09.06.2006:
So US commanders in Iraq claim that US military has infiltrated the “inner circle” of Zarqawi. Jordanian officials also claim to have penetrated the “inner circle” of Zarqawi. And Iraqi government’s Muwaffaq Ar-Rubay`i also claimed on Al-Arabiyya TV the the Iraqi government has infiltrated the “inner circle” of Zarqawi. All of them are lying, of course. There was no infiltration. Somebody tipped them to get the bounty, as was the case for Saddam.
If Peter Bergen is correct, and Osama bin Laden looks favourably upon Zarqawi’s death, then there’s a possibility that an ally of Osama is now very wealthy. But that could never happen, right?
Chalmers Johnson was asked by Brian Lamb on C-Span’s Q & A this weekend what he’d do if he were appointed Secretary of Defence. An entire show should be devoted to that question with a panel that includes Johnson and others from the right and left who are truly opposed to the status quo.