Questions about Iraq

After 8 years of invasion and occupation, after crimes against humanity, after hundred thousands of deaths (after documented civilian deaths 101,426 – 110,810 Full analysis of the Wikileak's Iraq War Logs may add 15,000 civilian deaths.) http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.....

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's

governing style raises questions about future of Iraq's fragile democracy

Maliki first gained the premiership because he seemed relatively weak. The December 2005 national elections had failed to produce a clear winner, and Iraq's fractious new parliamentarians were able to agree on Maliki largely because he was nobody's first choice. A lesser-known leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, Maliki had long-standing credentials in the Dawa Party that had opposed Saddam Hussein. He was religious enough to pass muster with Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and came to power with the electoral support of more hard-line Shiite political blocs -- those led by Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Yet he was secular enough to avoid sparking a major sectarian controversy with mainstream Sunnis, and he had a good relationship with leaders in Iraq's semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, with whom he had worked to oppose Saddam. Maliki was also receptive to American help, and he had a good rapport with President George W. Bush. According to a former senior official in the Bush administration, the two presidents had weekly phone calls in which they would share complaints about the hostile politicians in their respective legislatures.

Since late January, demonstrators had begun taking to the streets by the hundreds, then thousands. They were fed up. A year earlier, Iraqis had braved terrorist bombs to vote in national elections; then, their new leaders spent more than nine months haggling behind concrete blast walls in the fortified Green Zone over who would be in charge. The success of free and fair elections had given way to a uniquely democratic challenge -- nobody had won an outright majority -- and Iraq's leaders were by disposition unprepared to meet it. The former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, appeared to have the most seats in the parliament, but neither he nor Maliki, who led the second-largest bloc, was willing to compromise his claim on the premiership.

As summer arrived, the heat soared above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Baghdadis received less than five hours of electricity per day; their idle air-conditioners served as constant reminders of their government's failure to provide even basic services. Unemployment was stagnant. And though suicide attacks and roadside bombs had subsided since the hellish days of 2006 and 2007, unpredictable explosions still blew apart lives and families. By November, Maliki had outmaneuvered Allawi into a second term. The new government looked a lot like the old government.

If Iraq's

prime minister indeed has dictatorial tendencies, as his detractors allege, they do not include self-promotion of the Hussein variety. Maliki's aides say the prime minister was furious, and they suspect the billboards may have been raised to discredit him at a critical moment in the negotiations for a new government - to fuel perceptions that he is another Iraqi strongman in the making.

 That Maliki has an authoritarian streak has been amply demonstrated over the past 4 1/2 years, critics say. Maliki, originally selected in 2006 as a compromise candidate assumed to be weak and malleable, has proved to be a tough and ruthless political operator who cannily subverted parliament to cement his authority over many of the new democracy's fledgling institutions.

In his role as commander in chief of the armed forces, he replaced divisional army commanders with his appointees, brought provincial command centers under his control and moved to dominate the intelligence agencies.

The widely feared Baghdad Brigade, which answers directly to Maliki's office, has frequently been used to move against his political opponents. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused him of operating secret prisons in which Sunni suspects have been tortured.

Supposedly independent bodies, including the Commission on Integrity, designed to investigate corruption, and the Property Claims Commission, which settles Hussein-era land disputes, have seen their parliament-appointed directors removed and replaced with Maliki loyalists, without parliamentary approval.

 "We've seen Maliki move with masterful precision to control the army, then the intelligence services, and then secure a tighter and tighter grip over the civilian arms of state," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London's Queen Mary College.

"These aren't the actions of a decentralizing democrat. These are the actions of a man who wants to concentrate as much power as possible in his own hands."

Camp Ashraf Massacre

Two weeks after an attack by Iraqi security forces against Camp Ashraf, a base for Iranian exiles, killed 34 people and left over 300 injured, international and humanitarian law experts have urged the U.N. to conduct an impartial investigation regarding the role of Prime Minister Nouri Al- Maliki, as well as Iran and the United States, in the massacre.

"If the international community is serious about what it says in terms of defending unarmed people against violence and killing, and if the U.N. believes in the responsibility to protect, then of course it must take action against those who attack and kill innocent people, and they should be brought to justice," Ali Safavi, president of Near East Policy Research, a Virginia-based think tank, told Inter Press Service (IPS).

Some observers have criticised the U.N.'s delayed response to the latest incident. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay waited seven days to condemn the attack, finally stressing "there is no possible excuse for this number of casualties."

She urged "(Iraqi) authorities to take measures" and to prosecute any person found responsible for use of excessive force through a "full, independent and transparent inquiry".

The U.N. secretary-general has not made a public statement yet.

"Where is Ban Ki-moon? Why has he been silent so far?" Safavi asked IPS. "That is what the families of those in Ashraf are demanding."

Farhan Haq, a spokesperson for the secretary-general, told IPS that Ban fully supports the views of Pillay on the issue.

...was it worth it?

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/26-8

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/21/AR2010122106870_2.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/13/the_man_who_would_be_king?page=full