Posted on 11/29/2006 10:36:19 AM PST by STARWISE
President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be putting off their meeting by one day, the White House said Wednesday.
The delay comes after the high-stakes summit was marred by public disclosure of U.S. doubts about al-Maliki's capacity to control sectarian violence and a walkout of Iraq's coalition government by 30 parliamentarians loyal to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Five Cabinet ministers and 30 lawmakers suspended their participation in Parliament saying their action was necessary because the meeting in Jordan constituted a "provocation to the feelings of the Iraqi people and a violation of their constitutional rights." Their statement did not explain that claim.
"The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action," the Times quoted the memo as saying.
Al-Maliki and Bush are meeting in Amman, the Jordanian capital, Wednesday and Thursday in a summit aimed at halting Iraq's escalating sectarian violence and paving the way for a reduction of American troops.
"We are sticking to our position. ... The boycott is still valid," Falih Hassan, a Sadrist legislator, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Bush is a criminal who killed a lot of Iraqis and we do not want him to interfere in Iraq's affairs. The Iraqi government should negotiate with the U.N. Security Council, not with the leader of the country that is occupying Iraq."
(snip)
The Security Council responded to a request from al-Maliki, who said a top government priority is to assume full responsibility for security and stability throughout Iraq but that it needs more time.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Hmmmm. It's 10:30pm there now. Fox reported it was to be a breakfast meeting and there would be a press conference after. They will carry it about 2:00am our time.
How do you know the White House leaked the memo on purpose? When was the last time a president delayed a meeting with a head of state?
I don't know, do you? When was the last time the president had a meeting with a head of a Parliamentary government that just lost 5 cabinet ministers and 30 other ministers?
It makes no sense.
its the "yet" part of this that is the problem - they are capable of democracy. in fact, of all the middle east countries, they were the "most capable" of it, since they had a professional non-religious fanatic middle class.
but it all came too soon, their democracy is actually standing in the way now of using acute US force against the militias et al. to be blunt, there needed to be alot more killing and alot less voting, so long as it was the "right people" getting killed.
I am not sure what the endgame is now. can the US even re-assert military control over the country, do we toss out their democracy (essentially a coup) - or are those two options too painful, which means we are stuck with it. We cannot politically sustain two more years of 80-100 US KIA per month, on an open ended mission - the Dems will route us in 2008 if we do that.
This is why you see Baker in there making some moves.
So far I haven't seen Baker make any moves.
IIRC, the entire media were calling for the head of Scooter Libby for leaking the name of a low level CIA secretary... They wanted Libby tarred, feathered, drawn, quartered, burned, and chopped into tiny little pieces. They demanded a special prosecutor (and they got one - and he knew Libby nearly was innocent of the charges from the beginning). Where are the demands for the federal prosecuter now?
Mark
What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe?
Yes, the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort. They themselves, not just their consensual governments, or the now-demonized American Patriot Act and Guantanamo detention center, or some invader across the Mediterranean, have endangered their centuries-won freedoms of expression--and out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing. We can understand why outnumbered Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans, and were summarily executed, or perhaps why the 16th-century French did not show up at Lepanto, but why this vacillation of present-day Europeans to defend the promise of the West, who are protected by statute and have not experienced war or hunger?
Vic discovers the 16th and 17th century!! Careful now Vic. For a man who lives as if every day was 146 BC (and apparently thinks we do too), jumping over 1500 years can be a shock. And you're a traitor unless you well exactly what do you have to be a 'traitor' against Vic? I didn't exactly understand that run on sentence in the middle.
So Vic it appears states you're a traitor in Europe if you don't support the US Patriot Act (although one can't necessarily see how support of a foreign country's internal policies would make one a traitor in your own country). What about nationalism Vic? Shouldn't the Europeans be almost blindly loyal to their own nation? I mean that's what you've been preaching we should be here in the US. And the blind loyalism should work out well..(well other than we know where that got us the last 80 years)?
The thing to find out is just who the memo was sent to.
I wondered if he should have even left the country when I first heard of this mtg- it seems a good time to have a coup is when the Maliki is out of Iraq. I am once again furious at the NY Times, but more so at the idiot at the WH who leaked it. Goodness knows who is behind all of this- it should have stopped years ago, EVEN if it had nothing to do with this postponement. It is still illegal and wrong and slimey.
Osama said our bases in Saudi was main reason for his hatred of us.
Or Jim Baker.
This was an internal WH Memo...now that Powell and Armitage are gone I don't think there are any democrats left in the administration and I doubt Baker has access to anything...yet.
Sadr's group isn't strong enough to have a coup when the US is in country.
its going to be alot of behind the scenes stuff - alot of promises we will never know about.
So far I haven't seen Baker make any moves.
The Maliki government just went down in flames, the Saudi's are crying for military support, Jordan concedes that there is Civil War in Iraq; and you want to see the cc: list on a memo to burn someone in the administration. Got it.
A lot of people on FR need to quit blaming the MSM for the screw-ups of the Bush administration. I know the MSM HATES Bush, but the administration sure does give them a lot to work with. BTW, I don't trust Mailki any further than I could throw him.
Yeah, you're right. I felt funny using the word. Should have said trouble. Strange timing too that Iran releases their letter today, the day Bush was to meet in Jordan with Maliki.
Just on CNN up to 5000 troops being moved from other areas of Iraq to the Baghdad area. None of which will be from the al Anbar province.
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