Speaker warns Iraq has months to avert collapse

[rodeodance]

Going down down down.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060906/ts_nm/iraq_dc;_ylt=Amfo.Bxtoup6er.sGaWtl.2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Speaker warns Iraq has months to avert collapse

By Mussab Al-Khairalla 46 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -
Iraq's leaders have just months to mend their differences or see their country collapse, the speaker of parliament told wrangling deputies on Wednesday after a car bomb caused dozens of casualties at the morning rush hour.


Ethnic Kurds in the chamber demanded a new national flag to end a row over the Saddam-era version that has raised talk of Kurdish secession. But some members complained parliament's agenda, on its first full session after a summer recess, failed to address urgent issues that may affect the nation's survival.

Silencing one angry dissenter, Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani told the assembly: "Let's start talking the same language.

"We have three to four months to reconcile with each other," Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, said of a national reconciliation aimed at averting ethnic and sectarian civil war.

"If the country doesn't survive this, it will go under."

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Ayatollah al Sistani says he's washing his hands of politics...

...which now gives al Sadr's Medhi militia free reign to conduct themselves however they please. al Sistani was the choker chain on al Sadr and his militia.

[Kagemusha]

2. I'm not sure I'd completely agree with that way of putting it...

More like he was the choker chain on Shiite combattants in general, and the fact he was holding it, made a lot of combattants move over to the more loosely chained (by Sadr) Mahdi (sp) Army.

The horse is already out of the barn; this is just closing the barn doors.

[rodeodance]

3. yes, you are prob. right.