Iraqi infighting hinders U.S. strategy

[maddezmom]

Iraqi infighting hinders U.S. strategy
Iraqi political feuding is complicating President Bush's strategy for stabilizing Iraq.
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND NANCY A. YOUSSEF
[e-mail]

WASHINGTON -- Four months after President Bush launched his new Iraq strategy, the U.S. troop buildup there is proceeding apace, but feuding among Iraqi politicians and power brokers threatens to block the political reforms on which the success of the plan depends.

U.S. officials warn that the longer the impasse persists over laws on provincial elections and the distribution of Iraq's oil wealth among Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Sunnis, the greater the risk that the surge of 30,000 more U.S. troops into Baghdad, which is intended to provide a security umbrella for political reforms, will be for naught.

Until the political feuding ends, ''we are just maintaining the status quo,'' said a U.S. military official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Some U.S. and Iraqi politicians already are predicting that the Iraqi parliament won't pass any key legislation by September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, is supposed to assess the success of the surge.

''To me, the success of the surge is measured by whether it will produce a political settlement,'' Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told McClatchy Newspapers.

more: http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/106025.html

[ixion]

1. a good example of bad journalism from the Miami Herald

a) it is not a 'new' strategy. It is simply more of the same that has not been working.

b) Feuding among politicians is not the source of the problem, but a symptom, caused primarily by US meddling (like writing the oil law). The article fails to even mention this in passing.

c) Fails to discuss WHY the oil law hasn't passed (because it is a giveaway of Iraq's only natural resource to US oil companies).

d) Military solutions do not produce political settlements, historically speaking. They produce only more death and destruction.

e) Not really maintaining the 'status quo', as there has actually been an increase in violence there since the so-called 'surge' began.