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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Many Topics Including The Oldest Dinar Community. Copyright © 2006-2020


    America's Opportunity in Iraq

    Rocky
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    • Post n°1

    America's Opportunity in Iraq Empty America's Opportunity in Iraq

    Post by Rocky Tue 09 Oct 2018, 2:56 am

    [size=35]America's Opportunity in Iraq
    [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
    [/size]
    Barham Salih, president of Iraq, recently fielded questions during an interview in Sulaimaniyah, in Iraqui Kurdistan. (Ahmad Al-RubayeAFP/Getty Images)


    The new government in Baghdad has evoked two broad reactions in Washington: hope and dread.
    My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Meghan O'Sullivan [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by Iraq's new president and designated prime minister, Barham Salih and Adil Abdul-Mahdi. Both men have longstanding relationships with the U.S. government and have played important roles in building a new Iraq from the ashes of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.
    Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is more pessimistic. Looking at Iraq’s new government, he declared Iran the “clear winner,” [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] that the chief of Iran’s potent Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani, had brokered the deal for the new government.
    U.S. and Iraqi officials with whom I spoke told me the Iranians did not get everything they wanted, but neither did the Americans. Salih and Abdul-Mahdi represent a kind of compromise. The Iranians supported the coalition of Shiite religious parties represented by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and militia leaders like Hadi al-Amiri. Iran also favored another Kurdish candidate for the presidency favored by a rival Kurdish party.
    U.S. special envoy Brett McGurk, on the other hand, favored the slate of candidates affiliated with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. McGurk was instrumental in getting the Iraqi parliament to support al-Abadi over Maliki in 2014, a key condition for deeper U.S. military involvement in the fight against the Islamic State.
    In the end, it was an Iraqi who was most influential in the negotiations: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the 88-year-old head of the Shiite hawzas of Najaf, set the stage for Abdul-Mahdi’s selection as prime minister when he released a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] urging “new faces” in the next government. That ruled out Maliki and al-Abadi.
    Sistani’s position was understandable. The party that won the largest bloc in parliament in May was affiliated with the rebellious cleric [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a leader of the Shiite insurrection against U.S. forces in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 who has emerged as a fierce critic of Iranian influence in Iraq in recent years. His bloc, which includes communists and other outsiders, was most blunt in criticizing the corruption that has become endemic to Baghdad politics.
    The unrest and desire for change has only become more pronounced since the spring. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] torched government ministry buildings and the Iranian consulate last month in Basra, Iraq’s third largest city and an important hub for its chief export, oil. They demanded more jobs, a functioning power grid and an end to widespread corruption. One of the organizers of those protests, a human rights activist named [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], was shot dead in the street last month.

    Al-Ali’s murder also coincides with renewed threats from Iranian-backed militias against the U.S. U.S. officials tell me there is an increasing risk that those militias intend to kidnap Americans in Iraq. That’s one factor that led the U.S. to suspend operations in its consulate in Basra. Another is U.S. allegations that those militias [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] rockets and mortar rounds at the consulate last month.
    Hostility between the U.S. and Shiite militias is nothing new. One such group, Asaib al-Haq, was responsible for the brutal [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of U.S. troops near Karbala in 2007. More recently, however, there has been an [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] between U.S. forces and the militias during the fight against the Islamic State.
    What does all this have to do with the new government in Iraq? Between the election in May and the recent protests in Basra, Iraqis are making it clear that they don’t want to be a vassal state of Iran. This presents an opportunity. The new Iraqi government will have to show its independence. With a little skill and luck, the U.S. can quietly give Abdul-Mahdi the support he needs to push back against Iran and address the economic misery in places like Basra.
    To do that however, the U.S. needs to signal its commitment to Iraqi cities under threat from the militias. Barbara Leaf, who served as a senior U.S. diplomat in Basra in 2010 and 2011, told me when she served there, the consulate was shelled two to three times a week. By suspending operations in Basra, she said, the U.S. is sending the wrong message “not just to the Iraqi government, but to the Iraqi people.”
    She’s right. And there is another audience for this message: Suleimani and his many proxies in Iraq. Surely he needs to know that a few threats and errant rockets cannot drive the U.S. out of a city whose people are fed up with the thieves and terrorists he has empowered.
    Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun, and UPI. To read more of his reports, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.][/size]


    Read Newsmax: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] 
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