ALERT: Iraq becoming the first Arab Shi'ite state, allied with Iran.
Iraq: Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki urged Kurdish officials to hand over Sunni Arab Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terror charges and threatened to replace ministers who belong to the Sunni Arab Iraqiyah bloc if they do not end a Cabinet boycott.
Al-Maliki said Baghdad will not accept any interference in Iraqi justice and that ministers have no right to suspend their membership in the government. If the ministers do not come back for the next Cabinet meeting, he will appoint replacements.
Local leaders, in addition to Vice President al-Hashimi, are involved in violence, Prime Minister al-Maliki said at a news conference in Baghdad on 21 December. He also called for the arrest of his deputy, Saleh al-Mutlaq, for sabotaging the political process.
Al-Maliki said he gave videotapes incriminating al-Hashimi's security personnel to President Jalal Talabani and late Chief of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Abdel Aziz al-Hakim in 2008, but the leaders asked him to put the case on hold to ensure success in the political process. Al-Maliki said he has similar files proving the other leaders' involvement and that he will reveal their identities if they do not stop using violence.
Comment: In effect, Maliki has announced a pending purge of Sunni Arab political leaders, three days after the departure of the last American soldiers. It is an extraordinary act of defiance to consolidate Iraq as an Arab Shiite state before other groups and sects can act to prevent it.
Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said it will cooperate with judicial decisions from the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council regarding Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, Kurdistan Alliance member Mahmoud Othman said. Othman asked the judiciary to declare an arrest warrant and said the alliance will leave this decision process to the judiciary.
Comment: The logic of political events this week leads towards a resumption of civil war next year. The Kurds no longer have the US as their protector and they lack the strength, politically and militarily, to protect the Sunni Arabs. Together they can cooperate to defend their territories, but al Maliki is making it clear that Iraq is the first Arab Shiite state.
That probably explains the Sunni Arab determination, with obvious outside Sunni Arab financial support, to overthrow the Alawite government in Damascus to prevent the formation of a Shiite belt from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean Sea. To Sunnis, the spread of the Shiite heresy and apostasy means the return of fitna … chaos. Iraq is lost to the Sunni Arabs, for now, and the new battle lines against the Shiism are being drawn in Syria.
Phi Beta Iota: When US policy is based on 935 lies (known to many but only documented to the public long after the fact), the outcome is expensive and not at all in the public interest. Not only do we have thousands of US troops dead and wounded (75,000 with amputations), hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, but now we also have 18 veterans a day committing suicide (1000 a month trying). That is 6,570 veterans dying in the US, after leaving Iraq, by their own hand, every year–more than died in combat in Iraq in any given year. And no one speaks up….
