Iraq Backs Off Allegations That Iran Is Behind Violence
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi Government seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran Sunday saying it would not be forced into conflict with its Shiite neighbor. And Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered the formation of a committee to look into foreign intervention in Iraq.
As the government appeared to back down from its hardening stance against Iran, four marines were killed in Anbar in the deadliest attack in the Sunni province in months.
The government spokesman, Ali al Dabbagh, told reporters Sunday that a committee was formed to find “tangible information” about foreign intervention, specifically Iran’s role in Iraq rather than “information based on speculation.”
“We don’t want to be pushed into any conflict with any neighboring countries, especially Iran. What happened before is enough. We paid a lot,” Dabbagh said, referring to the eight years war between the two nations in which an estimated 1 million people died.
While the Iraqi government has long said they would not be used for a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran at odds over Iran’s nuclear aspirations, the statement came as the Iraqi government had taken tough stances towards Iran in the past week. This included sending a delegation last week to Iran to urge them to stop the flow of weapons and to refrain from funding Shiite militias battling Iraqi Security Forces.
U.S. officials in Baghdad rejected allegations made Saturday by a senior Iranian official who, according to Iranian state media, accused the United States of attacking Iraqi civilians.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Armand Cucciniello said that the remarks by an unnamed Iranian official “align the Iranian government with these very extremists and criminal elements and against the Iraqi government and people.
“The only appropriate response…to the concerns raised by the government of Iraq is for Iran to immediately cease providing funding, training and arms to extremist militias in Iraq.”
In Sadr City the battle continued with overnight U.S. air strikes in the northeast Shiite slum and stronghold of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
While Maliki said he would not stand for enemy “gangs” in Iraq, Sadr officials said they were open to negotiation.
Baha al Araji, a Sadrist lawmaker, condemned attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone where the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices are located and said that disbanding the Mahdi Army was a legitimate request. The Green Zone has come under heavy rocket fire for over a month.
“There are actions that Islam does not accept including random strikes coming out of Sadr City and into the Green Zone,” Araji said. “The government requested the disbanding of the Mahdi Army and this is a legitimate request to establish a state of law. But the law should be implemented upon all parties including the militias that entered the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior and still take their orders from their parties.”
Araji refers to the military wing of their Shiite rival the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Badr Organization along with other party militias. The Badr Organization was largely absorbed into the National Police but is known to still take orders from their party.
But he added that the Iraqi Government provoked the Mahdi Army after nearly a year of peaceful overtures from Sadr including twice freezing armed activity by his militia. He said he realized during visits to the slum of Sadr City, estimated to have more than 2 million people, how unpopular all political parties, including the Sadrists, had become.
“I believe [Sadr] had the idea that he wanted to create a situation in which to disband the Mahdi Army in the southern provinces,” Araji said. “But what’s happened lately caused a mixing of the cards and we returned to square one.”
In Sadr City, a day after a U.S. missile strike landed near a major hospital in Sadr City, hospital officials said that the main water supply was badly damaged and the hospital may have to close if it isn’t repaired within days.
Sadr Hospital, one of two main hospitals serving the massive Shiite Muslim slum, is operating on a backup water supply that wasn’t expected to last longer than 48 hours. On Sunday afternoon, a main street outside the hospital was flooded as workmen tried to repair a series of underground pipes that ruptured when the missiles targeted what U.S. military officials described as a militia outpost a few yards from the hospital.
“If there are no more attacks, we might be able to fix it. We don’t know,” said a hospital security official who gave his name as Abu Sajjad. “Otherwise, in two days we will run out of water and the hospital can’t go on.”
The official said that the U.S. strike also damaged 15 ambulances and forced many hospital staff to flee. Not everyone returned to work Sunday, leaving a Spartan emergency ward nearly empty of doctors.
The U.S. military said they were unsure when the more than month-long battle in Sadr City would end. U.S. soldiers are living in abandoned buildings on the edge of the Baghdad district, attempting to build a wall to stem the flow of rockets but are being slowed by sniper fire. Ministry of Interior officials said that 321 persons were killed in Sadr City in April alone and 834 were injured.
“They are firing at us every single day,” said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, spokesman for the Baghdad command. “When it ends is up to the Special Groups,” he said referring to Shiite militias.
Also Sunday Iraq’s first lady Hiro Talabani survived a roadside bomb attack as she traveled to the National Theatre in Baghdad. Across the capital, mortar and rocket attacks continued. In Mosul, Sarwa Abdul Wahab, a journalist and lawyer, was assassinated.
© McClatchy Newspapers 2008
Re-re-re-liberate Baghdad!
America stutters.
Now it’s the ‘best bang for the buck’ accusation:
‘Lebanese Hezbollah training Iraqi insurgents in Iran’
And the bought and paid for MSM propaganda machine just keeps printing this BS.
From what I’ve read, after WWI the British took over Iran (through BP Oil for the oil fields) In the 1950’s the C.I.A. caused the overthrow of Iran’s government because the elected president of Iran wanted to nationalize the oil fields, and we then installed the Shaw who didn’t nationalize anything. Iraq and Iran went to war and we sold arms to Iraq to perpetutate the war. Iraq invaded Kuwiat, We invaded Iraq, and again invaded Iraq. Now we want to invade Iran given the excuse that Iran is helping destablize Iraq which doesn’t seem very stable at all, and all the while Iran sits back and pokes a stick at the 500 Lb. gorilla,(the USA).
It’s all very confusing, it seems to me that if the Britts would have buggered off after WWI, and we would have not interfered with the internal political workings of Iran in the 1950’s, todays middle east situation could be totally different, and a lot more peaceful.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Iran is giving aid to the Iraqi’s… if China invaded Mexico you better believe I would want America arming and training Mexican fighters.
It’s common sense…
-James
www.thepoliticus.org
Yep.
On the other hand, what about all the US weapons found in Iraq? All the US purchased AK47s and weapons that ‘disappeared’ ? Turned up in PKK(Turkish) terrorist hands? Turned up in JAK(Iranian) terrorist hands?
Not to mention the high-explosives left unguarded at Al Qaqaa by American troops and subsequently looted in October 2004 by God-knows-who.
Weeks later the first “enhanced” IED’s started to take out American armored vehicles. The Pentagon’s response?
“IRAN is providing Iraqi insurgents with “shaped charge” IEDs!”
When mortar shells started falling on the Green Zone, what did the Generals cry?
“IRAN is providing artillery training to Iraqi insurgents!”
How many Iraqi Army soldiers did Bremer send home? 300,000?
What rubbish.
Iraq wants U. S. to back off allegations regarding Iranian involvement in Iraq? Prime Minister al-Maliki needs to be reminded that Iraq is George W. Bush’s country. He and al-Sadr are only allowed to play in it, and they’d best do it by Dubya’s rules.
Al-Maliki can do us all a favor (and particularly the citizens of his country that has somewhere between 82 & 89,000 civilian deaths since this entire fiasco began in ‘03) by simply telling the U. S. to go home.
OF course, he’d have to fight al-Sadr’s militia group all by himself (but wait, didn’t he try that in March and then get his ass kicked?)
Funny, how all the reporting I’ve been seeing as to military action in Sadr City or Basra (or anywhere for that matter) only makes mention of U. S. troops or air power. What happened to our training and support only policy?
That hospital thing over the weekend is really the icing on the cake. The longer we stay there, the more we make things worse for everyone involved.
Slit a vein or vote for McCain!
Its a fight to the finish. Primitive mortars and missiles thrown at the Green Zone versus sophisticated and powerful air strikes on anything that moves in Sadr City. Presumably the Green Zone is made of heavily reinforced bunkers, and Sadr city is relatively flimsy, certainly not battle-hardened structures. The continued fight depends more on food and water supplies, than armaments. There are more bullets and explosives in Iraq than food and water, and food and water are perishable. The reduction of rationing could be a policy to reduce the food resources available to insurgents. It would seem that those in the Green Zone cannot lose, but also they cannot win for a very long time, at the end of which they will have won nothing but the death of the entire population. Iraq will become the Green zone surrounded by nothing but rubble and bones. The US army is not itself doing massive attacks on Sadr, since this might greatly increase their ratio of short term losses to gains. Having bunkered in the Green Zone, thats the zone of relative personal safety, for a lot ragged troops that do not want to be there. The presence of the US is most definitely behind all the violence in Iraq , with a kill, maim, violence score card of greater than 10 to 1. Some one should authorize an invasion of the US , as it is a many times proven nuclear threat to world peace.
What did you think was going to happen? Bush has never been right about anything his whole life, and he’s still on a roll.(f-cking Dummy)we’ll be paying for this for along time,no matter how this ends.
Maliki - American puppet Maliki - wants “his” government to investigate “foreign intervention” in Iraq?
What about 300,000 US troops & contractors?
Aren’t they “foreign intervention” or did I miss something?
“Iraq Backs Off Allegations That Iran Is Behind Violence”
Allegations? Yeah, right. Made by Bush. The Iraqis either didn’t believe it, or didn’t care. Maybe Cuba is behind the violence in Iraq.
First, Bush accused Bin Laden of 9/11, but he quickly learned it was Saddam Hussein behind it.
First he (Bush) thought insurgents and Al-Qaida were behind the violence in Iraq, but now he has learned it is Iran.
The U.S.A. must control Iran in order to control middle east oil and natural gas. Destroying Iran and making the same kind of chaos that is now in Iraq is an option that some in the U.S.A. would not hesitate to take. The U.S.A. however is doomed to failure. Power in the ‘Great Game’ is already shifting away from the U.S.A. at a pace which quickens almost daily. The euro will replace the dollar as the world’s key currency. Russia, China, India, Brazil and other nations will rise as the U.S.A. sinks. The U.S.A. will continue to have the best weapons, at least for a few more decades. In fact, weapons are one of the very few things that the U.S.A. will continue to export. But time is not on the side of the U.S.A. and they are making no effort at all to convert to a post petroleum civilization. The downfall will come hard for the U.S.A. because of arrogance and corruption. Goodbye sweet land of liberty.
This whole thing accusing Iran or anyone else for that matter of meddling in Iraq is ludicrous and just plain ridiculous given Maliki’s quotation. Everybody is meddling over there.
He, “ordered the formation of a committee to look into foreign intervention in Iraq”. If the US and the fake “coalition forces” are not foreign intervention, then I don’t what is. We don’t get it. Iran toppled the Shah which was a CIA propped up fake government and was dismantled by the religious zealots. They’re determined not to let the US get a strong foothold in Iraq because they learned their lessons in Iran didn’t they? We don’t see a peaceful situation in Iraq. Flooding Iraq with extortion and bribery does not seem to be working either. These people don’t value money above ideology, which is a distinct American “democratic” value. Good for them.
And while we sympathize with the Jews in Israel, you truly have to have more than religious underpinings and something more than the glue of religion to hold you together and give the nation some legitimacy. This is akin to calling all Baptists from all over the world, to come to Oklahoma and carve out a compound sustained by nothing more than fairy tales. If memory serves correctly, these religious experiments have been tried before in Oregon with the Bagwan Shree Rashneesh which imploded under its own weight of evil and deception. What creates a distinct nation is tens and hundreds of thousands of years of cultural evolution resulting in a distinct dress, food, educational system, and religion, etc. but not a religion alone. Under ordinary circumstances this creating of a nation on religious grounds would be defined as a cult. Unless people start to change their way of thinking there will never be any peace in the middle east.
Rather than trying to broker and bring peace to the middle east the Saudis are busy building mammoth indoor entertainment centers, indoor protected golf courses, and even indoor climate controlled ski slopes in the desert. If you can believe that.
SRD
http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
” Edward1793 May 5th, 2008 12:27 pm
… Now we want to invade Iran given the excuse that Iran is helping destablize Iraq which doesn’t seem very stable at all, and all the while Iran sits back and pokes a stick at the 500 Lb. gorilla,(the USA).”
“Only” 500lb bombs, the USA? Those are the tinny-bopper, ‘lady-finger’ USA bombs. USA really prefers the 1,000lb and 2,000lb bombs. It’s just that the latter are a little more expensive, I guess. After all, it’s clearly not for humanitarian reasons that the USA drops more 500lb rather than larger bombs.
‘Lady-finger’, btw, refers to tiny firecrackers we can safely enough hold in our hands, between our fingers, when the explosion happens. Some have a little more “bite” than others, but even the worst still bite, only; else, it’s like a pinching sensation. Iow, very harmless firecrackers.
Edward… continues:
“It’s all very confusing, it seems to me that if the Britts would have buggered off after WWI, and we would have not interfered with the internal political workings of Iran in the 1950’s, todays middle east situation could be totally different, and a lot more peaceful.”
What’s ‘confusing’ is not the mess we’re in, but getting out of it and never repeating it ever again; awfully complicated. And it’s Brit, not Britt, while I’m also not sure if you’re right with respect to the British history part of what you say, for Britain was, in or during British imperialist, capitalist, … predator fashion in Iran in the mid-19th century, f.e.; and I believe that perhaps the whole of this foreign (then-British) aggression was in part, or stronger, based on Iran being a main oil resource country. (It never was for any or an honourable reason anyway.)
ODDLY, but not so oddly, given “politics is full of hypocrisy”, the USA has managed to get the EU, and enough from Ru. and China, for sanctions against Iran, and for a reason that makes NO sense at all, really. Iran’s been within its legitimate rights, and it still would be if it worked on developing a nuclear bomb. If “Americans” will be hit by a nuclear bomb, then either it’s [by] their govt, or another govt that is [replying], as opposed to first-strike action. Either way, the fault falls on the U.S. govt and its real, and hidden ruling elites; but if the USA is hit in first-strike terms, then don’t look for who’s guilty among foreign govts; look at the govt of the USA. Either way, it’ll be the fault of the USA.
Lovely; not. Is this what you want for guardians? If it is, then ‘One Who Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ (Jack ‘baseball-bat-to-windshield’ (when people in traffic don’t lay off of their damn horns) Nicholson) may be playing sometime soon in your vicinity and it might instill a little sanity into you. Watch the BIG North American indigenous guy rip the toilet from the floor and then go out and do the same with all toilets in govt buildings; maybe?
From what I’ve read, the USA got involved in Iran in the 1950’s, to overthrow the great national or state leader who saw to nationalising resources, etc., a GOOD leader, so you’re therefore right about the USA in Iran in the 1950s. But perhaps there’s a date discrepancy in what you say about Britain. Maybe (?).
That’s the ANSWER we’ve been waiting for, for a suggestion for an anti-war, -injustice protest, go in all govt buildings and rip out the toilets! After all, protesting, dissenting with a sense of humour can be more fruitful for gains.
Remove profit from the MIC/OIL corporations and war will stop. War on Iran will again double the price of oil and the cash reserves of OPEC et al. Follow the money.