31 March 2008
Things have heated up quite a bit in the Basra cauldron. After 5 years of doing almost nothing and without notifying the U.S. military, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took on al-Sadar’s army of Shiite militias, ordering them to put down their arms. That has not happened and fierce fighting continues between the Iraqi security forces and the militants. Maliki misjudged the strength of the militants and has called upon the US and the UK for air support. Basra is the oil center of Iraq and using the nasty word “OIL” seems to be the main reason we really went into Iraq in the first place.
After going thru the “weapons of mass destruction” lies we then entered the “getting rid of a dangerous leader” phase. Totally ignored was the civil war going on between the Shiites and Sunnis putting the blame of a lot of violence on al-Qaeda. They did their share of course but not to the extent of the sect fighting. Now we’ve reached the point of a power struggle of Shiites vs. Shiites over the control of Basra and the Iraq oil interests, a change from Shiite-Sunni-Kurd fighting. This situation is very important to the U.S. because we will now witness how fit the Iraqi security are and if they can take over so our troops can start coming home.
I watched an interview on Meet the Press yesterday between Tim Russert and 4 star General Hayden, head of the C.I.A. and his feelings are that it will be years before the Iraqis are ready to stand alone. As a Health Educator, it was disturbing to see the facial tics that General Hayden exhibits. From my point of view they probably are from extreme stress and that is one heck of a stressful job that he is overseeing. His answer to a question about the C.I.A. using waterboarding torture was also disturbing to me, he said that it was a question that he never asked. Seems to me that was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” answer. That answer was almost immediately followed by “the C.I.A. does not torture”. I’ll believe that when pigs fly.
All in all, the upcoming reports from Gen. Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq don’t sound too promising in regard to more troop withdrawal. It looks very much like Bush will leave the mess that he created in the lap of the next administration. The evening news last night said that al-Sadar asked his militia to lay down their arms. We’ll have to wait and see if the cease fire will hold. The 4 days of curfew in Baghdad and Basra has been lifted. I do know that the names of 14 more military killed in action in the past week were also listed on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos. Yep, that “surge” is really working.
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