Iraq ex-PM (Allawi) says survives assassination (by Sadr)

Iraq's former prime minister Iyad Allawi said gunmen tried to assassinate him in Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrine on Sunday, forcing him to cut short an election campaign visit pursued by an angry mob.

"It appeared to be an assassination attempt," the secular Shi'ite said; 60-70 men in black, armed with guns and knives, set upon his small party as he prayed at the Imam Ali mosque.

Police said Allawi's group was attacked by men with batons and fled the shrine under a hail of rocks, tomatoes and shoes -- the latter a mark of grave insult in Iraqi culture.

Allawi, who seems to relish playing up to a tough-guy image and once barely survived an axe attack by agents of Saddam Hussein, refused to accuse any group directly. But broad hints that Shi'ite Islamists had a hand in it are likely to inflame an already bad-tempered campaign for the majority Shi'ite vote.

In particular, aides said his assailants chanted support for supporters of militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Police said some of Allawi's guards and police fired in the air around the sprawling mosque complex as the politician's party ran for safety. A colleague who was accompanying Allawi said he heard several shots but was unaware who had fired.

"We believe this was premeditated ... it was very clear that they had evil intent to kill either the whole delegation or at least me," he said.

Referring to the killing in 2003 at the same mosque of a leading cleric, widely blamed on Sadr's movement, aides said the attackers chanted Sadr's name: "It was the same chanting ... linked to the martyrdom of Abdul Majeed al-Khoei,"

It should surprise no one that Allawi was treated according to the new Islamic Constitution of Iraq - "Islam is the official state Religion and NO LAW SHALL CONTRADICT ISLAM" PERIOD!

Notice how all the other parts of the constitution's "Tolerance" clauses were not evident in the way Shiites treated Allawi. We can expect more of this from Iraqi ISLAMIC Freedom.

.... if the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas OR Sharia Shiites takes power by through electoral success, then we should not applaud it as democracy. They will institute highly repressive Islamist regimes, as is occuring in southern Iraq now, with the stated goal of opposing the United States, and civilization IN GENERAL. Such electoral results, will be no genuine victory for freedom, any more than if in their first post WWII elections the Germans had voted to bring the Nazis back in or the Japanese had brought back Tojo.

The draft constitution gives an undefined “Islam” constitutional authority, a practice shared by only about one third of the Muslim majority countries in the world. More worryingly, it places Sharia judges on the Supreme court—a practice followed by only Iran, Afghanistan, and, in its own fashion, Saudi Arabia. Not the best company.

President Bush should have used his influence ( Billions of Dollars, 160,000 troops) in Iraq to limit these extreme Sharia influences.

...a system that would have brought Islamists to power by free elections in Algeria in 1991, or that may bring them to power in Gaza in 2005, might be democratic but it would surely not further freedom. The United States should surely promote self-determination. But it makes little sense to pretend that everyone’s self-determination is in America’s interests. If, for example, there were truly free elections in Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood won, do people really think that would be better for us and for the world?

- is it somehow “racist” or “foolish” to observe that a culture which has not produced democracies as a matter of course over many centuries (and particularly over the last three centuries, when democracy has spread elsewhere) might be “undemocratic”? If, for example, the Shiites in Southern Iraq eventually split off from the Sunnis and Kurds, and either form their own country or marry up in some form with Iran, they will have determined their own fate but the resulting sharia state would not be a democracy recognizable to us.

It is noteworthy that the most successful democracy in the Muslim world has been Turkey – the nation that most rigorously walled Islamic culture out of political life - until recently and as a result has begun to side against the United States WOT.

Some try to compensate for this problem by advancing familiar refrain that the goal in Iraq is not to create a western style democracy but what is described as a “variant of democracy that answers their needs.” This just repositions the goal line to avoid conceding that Iraq and other authoritarian states are unlikely to reach the actual goal line paid for by OUR Billions and BLOOD.

The Iranians, or at least the mullahs in power, have settled on a variant of democracy that answers their needs – but I doubt anyone would regard it as a real democracy. No more blood for Islam. If they want

OUR Billions and

OUR BLOOD, - they must do it

OUR WAY!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.