tagged w/ Maliki
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As national elections draw closer, Iraqis are fearing more government repression of dissent, with several journalists reporting to have been beaten by security forces while government officials are issuing warnings about media coverage.As national elections draw closer, Iraqis are fearing more government repression of... more
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Getting caught up on this story from yesterday in the NY Times: Apparently security forces in Iraq are using bomb detecting "wands" that the Pentagon thinks are useless. All those checkpoints that are supposed to keep Iraq's cities safe from car bombs might not be having much of an effect at all.
From the NY Times:
"The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives. Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”
Iraq is in the middle of a delicate transition period. Things have begun to seem more stable, less violent. US troops have pulled back to their bases, out of the cities. And blast walls in the capital have even come down. But with recent bombings in Baghdad - bomb detection is a really critical part of maintaining security. The New York Times described the wands as working on the "same principle as a Ouija board" - by the power of user suggestion.
From the NY Times:
"On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle. During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman. “You need more training,” the general said."
On the Current News Blog: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/05/iraqs-bomb-detectors-are-useless/
The story in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04sensors.html
Image: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/11/04/world/04sensors_CA1.htmlGetting caught up on this story from yesterday in the NY Times: Apparently security... more
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A boy and man outside their home in the Samarra neighborhood of Baghdad. The boy holds a white flag signifying that they are noncombatants.
Baghdad - After months of tough negotiations and multiple revisions, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has decided to back the controversial U.S.-Iraq security agreement that calls for the complete withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Friday.
At Maliki's meeting with the Presidency Council last week, President Jalal Talabani and Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul Mehdi responded that they and their political blocs also supported the draft, but the Sunni Muslim vice president, Tariq al Hashimi, declined to give his endorsement, Askari said.
Even after receiving what the U.S. government called the final agreement, Maliki asked for two more changes, which have been agreed to, Askari said. One was to strike a line that would allow for a review in order to extend the June 30 date to withdraw from Iraqi cities. Another asked that a line referring to consultation with "relative Iraqi authorities" on home raids and searches be changed to the "Iraqi government."
Askari said Maliki, who'd won two last-minute concessions from the Bush administration, plans to address the nation to seek public support for the accord. He'll present it to the Cabinet on Sunday and if it's approved, it will go to the parliament, which will vote for or against it. The Bush administration is briefing Congress on the accord but won't submit it for a vote. Without Sunni backing the agreement could die before it goes to parliament, however.A boy and man outside their home in the Samarra neighborhood of Baghdad. The boy holds... more
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Last July, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said U.S. troops should be out of Iraq “as soon as possible” and endorsed Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) withdrawal plan. Obama “talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,” Maliki told Der Spiegel magazine.
Days later, as Obama wrapped up meetings with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh reiterated his government’s stance, saying “the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal.”
Negotiating the post-UN mandate security agreement with Iraq, Bush argued for more time and both sides ultimately agreed that all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, not 2010, even though Bush has said previously that “if they were to say, leave, we would leave.”
Why did Bush go back on his word? A source tells ThinkProgress that White House communications staff were concerned that Maliki’s endorsement of the 2010 time line would damage Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign. Indeed, during an interview with Iraqi television last week (according to an Open Source Center translation), Maliki suggested that the U.S. presidential elections played a role:
Actually, the final date was really the end of 2010 and the period between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011 was for withdrawing the remaining troops from all of Iraq, but they asked for a change [in date] due to political circumstances related to the [U.S] domestic situation so it will not be said to the end of 2010 followed by one year for withdrawal but the end of 2011 as a final date.
In fact, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that as part of the security agreement, Bush wanted U.S. troops to stay in Iraq even longer. “It was a U.S. proposal for the date which is 2015, and an Iraqi one which is 2010, then we agreed to make it 2011,” Talabani said.
But by endorsing Obama’s time line, Maliki indirectly slighted McCain, who has consistently and strenuously argued against setting a withdrawal date and has even said he wouldn’t mind having U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years. But Maliki’s new position has left McCain scrambling, first saying its “a pretty good timetable,” but then denying he used “the word timetable” and later settling on “anything is good.”
Despite Bush’s constant refrain that commanders, not politics, will decide the course in Iraq, it seems that trying to help his party retain the White House is more important. Last July, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said U.S. troops should be out of Iraq... more
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