The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.
It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group. . . .
The shift, if it holds, would solidify a transfer of power from Mr. Sadr, who had lorded his once broad political support over the government, to Mr. Maliki, who is increasingly seen as a true national leader.
It is part of a general decline in violence that is resonating in American as well as Iraqi politics: Senator John McCain argues that the advances in Iraq would have been impossible without the increase in American troops known as the surge, while Senator Barack Obama, who opposed the increase, says the security improvements should allow a faster withdrawal of combat troops.
The Mahdi Army’s decline also means that the Iraqi state, all but impotent in the early years of the war, has begun to act the part, taking over delivery of some services and control of some neighborhoods.
Three women wrapped in explosives killed dozens in Iraq on Monday, shaking the country as chaos and ethnic violence erupted in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk, where tensions had already run high between majority Kurds and ethnic Turkmens.All told, at least 61 people were killed and 238 wounded, nearly all of them Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad. It was one of the bloodiest days in a year in which violence has dropped strikingly.
-- RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and SABRINA TAVERNISE
McCain has had an absolute disaster of a week — on an aesthetic and optical level, looking petty, doddering, bumbling, and entirely presidential; and on a substantive level, being forced to reverse himself on perhaps the key plank of his campaign by essentially supporting Obama/Maliki’s 16-month timeline for withdrawal. But in the media’s eyes, McCain comes out ahead, because… well, I’m not entirely sure why!
-- SEBASTIAN
By the end of last week, John McCain was agreeing with Barack Obama that 16 months would be "a pretty good timetable" for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, but now Gen. David Petraeus says no.
The situation in Iraq, he tells an interviewer, is too volatile to "project out, and to then try to plant a flag on, a particular date."
Unlike the candidates, who have condensed their positions to bumper stickers of withdrawal or victory, Petraeus is wary of what Colin Powell called the Pottery Barn rule about Iraq, "You break it, you own it."
It should be sobering to hear from our man on the ground that McCain's claims of victory and belaboring of Obama for defeatism are, to put it kindly, premature.-- ROBERT STEIN
In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he did more than legitimize the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won.
Maliki's endorsement left the McCain campaign and the Bush administration deeply discomfited. They underestimated Maliki's sophistication and cunning.
Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.
But that demand was foreshadowed by an episode in June 2006 in which al-Maliki circulated a draft policy calling for negotiation of just such a withdrawal timetable and the George W. Bush administration had to intervene to force the prime minister to drop it.I think John is treading on some very thin ground here when he impugns motives and when we start to get into, "You’re less patriotic than me. I'm more patriotic." I admire and respect John McCain very much. I have a good relationship. To this day we do. We talk often. I talked to him right before I went to Iraq, as a matter of fact. John’s better than that.
-- CHUCK HAGEL
The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said Parsons of Pasadena, Calif., received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general's office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons's work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million. . . .
Parsons's work is emblematic of other troubles in the $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort, in which there have been widespread problems of contractors doing poor work, being late and overspending on projects. Those issues combined with bad record-keeping, lack of oversight by overworked government managers, and high personnel turnover for both the government and contractors in an unstable war zone have created millions of dollars in waste, according to the Iraq inspector general.For it is McCain - ripping a page from the playbook of his bosom buddy President Bush - who has sought since the beginning of the general election to use a combination of recess-level rhetoric and a constant stream of distortions to turn every aspect of American foreign policy into a campaign prop. Regardless of how it affects the safety of Americans in the Middle East and throughout the remainder of the globe.
Photograph by Michael Kamber for The New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment