Politics As Usual

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
But this isn't all that clear. Note the following from your own link:

• There seems to be a contradiction in the press reporting, with some saying that the US accepted a provision that the arrest warrant against Muqtada be suspended for the time being, while this Reuters report seems to suggest that the U.S. would still very much like to apprehend him. If the latter is true, it would help explain his reluctance to come out in public at a time when he has agreed to dissolve his militia in the holy cities, and when his fighters in Kufa, in any case, have taken heavy casualties.

I sincerely hope our intention is still to apprehend him at some point. It is going to be pretty awkward if after the handover of sovereignty we have some difference of opinion with the Iraqi leadership as to whether Sadr should be detained. Obviously we'll arrest him if we want to, because we are still the big dog over there, but it certainly won't be a PR victory. And of course if he never comes to justice it will be one more firebrand who can claim to have beaten the occupiers, just like those thugs in the fallujah story I posted earlier this week.

Like everyone else I'm glad we didn't have to reduce any mosques to rubble to end this standoff. There are a lot of questions to be answered before we know if this was a win or a loss.

And here's the rub. Too many competing reporters with too many competing agendas are all too quick to report a story.

Excellent point. I'd throw in incomplete information as well, but that may be subsumed in the "too quick to report" part. Then again, complete info may never be forthcoming, at least not until Ken Burns makes the ten-part documentary on the Iraq invasion. I can't wait to hear Shelby Foote try to pronounce "Abu Ghraib" or "Umm Qasr."

PS - The appointment of the exile Allawi over the not-so-silent relcutance of [UN puppet] Brahimi has to be seen as a victory for the US, no?

Beyond the immediate sensation of sticking a thumb in the UN's eye, do you really think so? If we're throwing our picking-the-govt chips in with Brahimi it would seem to me that anything that complicates his task is bad news for us. I should remember the rub you cite above, but I'm not sure I can say confidently that the governing council are really "our guys" any more. Esp after Chalabi's break with us (and not the recent stuff, but back when he and some of the other higher profile Shi'ites on the IGC decided to voice Sistani's objections to the transitional law).

btw, no need to bracket the UN puppet before Brahimi's name. I believe that's his actual title.

edited for grammar. Hello, to save me the trouble of editing this stuff can you send your reviewing attorney down here before the next time I post?