Maliki says Bush language emboldening the terrorists
This is too damn funny. Maliki says Condi Rice's lack of faith emboldens the terrorists!!!!
He's taking lessons from Tony Snow and Dick Cheney.
(This is just a clip from a much more significant article. Maliki, looking at the likelihood of a mid term US drawdown and ensuing open civil war, is trying to twist the US into uparming the Iraqi security forces (Shia) before they withdraw.
Maliki is trying to capitalize on US antiwar sentiment to get the Shia weapons.
I wonder if he is extorting against Bush's security plan.)
In a sign of the tense relations with Washington, he (Maliki) chided the US for suggesting his Government was living on “borrowed time”. Such criticism boosted Iraq’s extremists, he said,...
“I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don’t give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success. I believe that such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American Administration, but I can tell you that they haven’t defeated the Iraqi Government.”
He's taking lessons from Tony Snow and Dick Cheney.
(This is just a clip from a much more significant article. Maliki, looking at the likelihood of a mid term US drawdown and ensuing open civil war, is trying to twist the US into uparming the Iraqi security forces (Shia) before they withdraw.
Maliki is trying to capitalize on US antiwar sentiment to get the Shia weapons.
I wonder if he is extorting against Bush's security plan.)
posted by mikevotes at
7:08 AM
5 Comments:
That Maliki is a quick study. I think we've all underestimated him.
By
Praguetwin, at 6:28 AM
I think underestimating the Iraqis is one of the base flaws in this whole endeavor.
Politics in Iraq is life and death, and it has been for two generations.
Today, if you make a mistake you and your whole family could be killed, but that's not new.
The Shia have been organizing/working in that environment throughout Saddam's rule. Being a Shia leader in Saddam's Iraq was not politics for the weak.
These guys are deadly sharp in their calculations.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 7:20 AM
Where the Bush administration is a political one-note juggernaut -- careening down an immutable track -- The Iraqi's are like political sand -- able to ebb an flow with the winds. This confuses the administration, which still seems to think the people of the Middle East and the broader Arab world actually give a crap about Bush's grandiose, evangelical vision of Western manifest destiny in the region.
I've said it before, Bush has come to a chess tournament armed with a rack of checkers.
By
-epm, at 9:04 AM
ha, well said epm!
By
Matteo Tomasini, at 9:39 AM
One note, indeed. You have to wonder about the psychological makeup of the core of this administration which considers brute force the only way to achieve anything.
And, certainly the Iraqis are playing a more complex game, partially because they have to. Think about the fact that Maliki alone has to placate three interests, US, Iran, domestic Shia, all in the midst of a war.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 1:08 PM
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