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Grand Ayatollah Sistani has made it clear he is not pleased with the agreement. "He had previously said he would not express an opinion on the pact and would leave it up to parliament to decide, as long as there was broad consensus in the event it was passed."
Today he made it clear that the standard of a “broad consensus” has not been met:
“There was no national consensus over the pact, a matter that disturbs the country,” the source said in a press statement that was made while Aswat al-Iraq was present. “The pact is incomplete and mysterious,” he added. The source questioned “the Iraqi government’s ability to execute the pact,” considering U.S. pressures in this regard. He also referred to preserving “Iraq’s sovereignty and funds.”
And noting the implicit relinquishing of sovereignty by voting for an agreement which legitimizes extending the occupation, even if only to 2011, one of the Sadrist MPs stated that:
all options are open for the Sadirsts in accordance with their constitutional and legal rights, adding “resistance of occupation” is a legitimate right guaranteed by the international law”.
“The Sadrists would not cede their national principles and would continue to seek the independence and full sovereignty of Iraq,” Fawzi Akram Tarzi, a member of parliament from the Sadrist bloc of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, told Aswat al-Iraq.
“We would contest the voting over the security pact with the United States through the federal court on the grounds that the process was not constitutional,” he said, adding the voting was conducted before reading out the items of the agreement.
Al Sadr’s offices will be closed “for three days of mourning."
"We pay our condolences to the Iraqi people for the vote for the pact of humiliation and disgrace in the catastrophe of black Thursday," said Sheik Muhanad al-Gharawi, a Sadr delegate.
Meanwhile, violence continued throughout Iraq with two bombings in Mosul claiming 44 victims and the ethnic cleansing of the ancient Christian community there continues.
Not quite a victory.
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Indeed not. Thank you Siun.
Thank you, Siun.
History will not look kindly upon the US for our destruction of this place, but once we realized the scope of the wrong, we continued to muck about, and in secrecy.
The grandkids will wonder what we could possibly have been thinking.
Once the wars and ocuupations are ended…then dark operations takeover the effort to undermine foriegn powers. That has been going on over my lifetime. False flag operations that blame others, secret coups and all the powers of the allied secret servies will not be reigned in.
The forces of violence, weaponry are and have been ever increasing in scope throughout the planet. And it is all sactioned by MSM, The Church and tacitly the State. Jean Genet’s Balcony is as relevant today as it was when written. We are all fair game.
How can anyone possibly think any of this is legal. No one apparently knows all the provisions in this ‘agreement’ and the ones who do cannot agree on what it actually means.
In order for an agreement to be an agreement – there must be agreement on the provisions!!
That has not happened at any level, either in Iraq or here.
Evening all!
The Sadrists have actually gone to court to challenge the legality of the SOFA – based on both the lack of an agreed text and the claim by Maliki that only a simple majority rather than a 2/3 vote was needed.
Soooo, Siun, what do you think would happen if it goes down in flames – either now, or later?
Is this super-secret SFA thing going to allow us to stay there (I hope not!) even if we don’t get the SOFA?
I’m kind-of pulling for the nothing gets done at least until Obama takes the oath of office.
The fact that the Sadrists are using the court to challenge, at least for the time being, seems hopeful.
you got this wrong. the shrub says we set free 50 million iraqis. it’s a victory, ya see.
I am also interested in this ‘frozen funds’ issue. Supposedly the funds were frozen because Bush declared Saddam’s government a state sponsor of terror or something like that.
Now that the Saddam government doesn’t exist due to a violent overthrow by an outside party (US!) it seems that there is no longer any legal justification for us to continue to hold those funds. They should be released immediately, and if I was al-Maliki – the minute they were a wire transfer to get them out of the U.S. would be automatically triggered.
Does anyone know what’s up with this?
Which 50 million are those? Does it include the 3 million displaced refugees in Syria and Jordan? And the 1 million internally displaced ones. And the one million dead ones?
If you subtract all those people – it’s not quite 50 million any more…
I wondered what he was getting at with that count.
Per google and the CIA
Iraq — Population: 27,499,638 (July 2007 est.)
According to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/iz.html
don’t know where he gets his count. he’s nuts, of course.
No one is quite sure who will control the frozen funds under the SOFA and whether the US will go to the EU and the UN to protect Iraqs interests – this is a big issue for Iraq
Iraq=25 + Afghanistan=25.
he might be including pak and afg for all i know.
From all available evidence they will be convinced that there was no thinking done at all. And of course that idea will be helped along by their trying to read Bush speeches and compare them to the realities.
I think he just makes up crap out of thin air, and then because he said it (he’s the Decider after all) it becomes a ‘fact’.
imagine that. he alone is responsible for their liberation. must make him really proud.
I’m just reporting. You decide. *g*
I don’t mean to get all USAcentric, I understand it’s their country and we’ve fucked it up beyond recognition, but: is there any reason AT ALL why we can’t see this agreement? Have any congresscritters called on the administration to release an English-language copy of it? I read that the IRANIANS got a copy in Farsi — is that true?
I mean, I know it’s up to the Irakis to decide what to do with their own country, but we have 300,000 soldiers and contractors there. Can our legislators — can WE — please read what we’ve negotiated?
I’ve never heard of such a thing.
It became a joke, then a commonplace phrase accompanied by a smirk.
And a few days ago, with no snark or humor, I heard a serious journalist refer to President-elect Obama as the “Decider.”
I could go happily to my grave if I never heard that ‘word‘ again.
I know Dennis Kucinich has been asking but he’s in the House and since they don’t okay treaties he doesn’t carry much weight.
There were some Senators early on when they first started discussing it and they were saying that because it really IS a treaty that the Senate MUST get it.
But you know the Decider. He decided it was not a treaty and therefore, the only person who gets to see it is him.
Yeah, I’d be happy to see that one retired too, along with “homeland”
so many non-words this crowd has gifted us (there’s another one for the ages: gift as a verb!)
Oh no! If there is anything Obama is not is ‘the decider’. He actually listens to his people first. Unlike the shrub.
Disagree. The only person to see it is Cheney. W isn’t interested.
My favorite is ‘misunderestimate’. *g*
My bad. You are correct!
There were some questions raised in congress but no release of an English version – particularly odd since it was originally written in English then translated to Arabic but no one in Iraq (including it seems the members of Parliament) saw that – the circulating copy in Iraq was a translation of a Farsi version (one assumes Maliki provided this to Iran)which was being translated back to Arabic.
Democracy is a heckuva thing, eh?
That’s a story in and of itself!
No wonder no one knows what it says – even in the language of the person looking at whatever version they have. It has been translated so many times it has lost all meaning.
I was also shocked when I read the ‘copy’ that McClatchy has at how short it is. It’s only 24 pages – in size 18 font and 1.5 spacing and huge margins.
I’ve seen military high-level documents before (which this technically is) and this thing reads like something a bunch of college kids made up in Freshman Comp 101.
Any view of there being a “victory” in Iraq for Americans surley misreads what WashingtonDC thought it could “win” by attacking and mounting this unsustainable “occupation of Iraq” from the start.
Iraq is a hotbed of religous,sectarian and tribal mixes and blends that is not about to submit to WashingtonDC and American desires to control West Asian petro markets or the politics of American dominance in West Asia.
Perhaps if WashingtonDC could screw up to the levels of garrison troop counts and sheer ruthlessness of repression Iraq occupation by Americans could be done. But WashingtonDC has not the fortitude of driven desire needed to complete that position. Americans would have to yield any remaining claims to moral and ethical position on international stage.
This SOFA the Americans have pushed on al-Maliki who in turn has pushed on Iraqis has several expiration dates on it. Jan.20,2009 is one. November of 2010 is another. Those are the American expiration dates. The Iraqi expiration dates are much more elastic. Much more.
WashingtonDC cannot spend or kill enough to “win” in Iraq.
There is no victory to be won. WashingtonDC will be constrained by the cost of it. By the blood of it. By the ruthless and brutal depths of it.
Getting in was so easy. Staying to occupy was the stupid thing to do.
Getting out will likely not come on American terms or desires.
WashingtonDC may not like it. Too bad.
Seems par for the course if the U.S. wrote it. Sounds like a Bremer document.
Yeah, it’s just the little details.
Okay. So what’s to stop us from detonating a bomb in it just before we hand it over. And when exactly does this hand-over occur (it really does not say). Turn it over to al-Maliki? The military?
Details, details.
Teddy is upstairs!
We Loved Her Way Back When
Elliott has a diary!
One Last Thing for Bush To Do
“…adding the voting was conducted before reading out the items of the agreement.”
Oh, nice. Is this one of Humpty Dumpty’s lines? “First the vote, THEN the debate. Everything in proper order.”
This is how we are teaching them Democracy, right?
Who’s in charge of the curriculum? Tom Delay? Newt Gingrich?
Thanks, Siun!
Bob in HI
Entirely EPU’d
The Mongol sacking and burning of Bagdad, of the university and the libraries there are not forgotten in Iraq. Now the atrocity of attempted cultural extermination by American barbarians is added to the memories.
As for “The grandkids”, the trajectory of American education is such that it is more likely your “grandkids” will be dumber than a bag of hammers, completely incapable of such wonder, drooling their way through a miserable, mean existence, comforted solely by “how exceptional” they are, wrapped in their flags for shelter from the cold. In your calculations, never forget this possibility, have a good life…..
addendum:
Sorry Newtonusr, should you find this
To avoid unintended insult, the “you” and “yours” are generic, not specific or personal. Like all adults on the advanced side of the generation gap since there was one, the world is going to the dogs in a hand-basket.
All the best…..