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Banned
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Yup...it isn't working.....
Compare one of the most accurate corporate news media accounts of what happened in Iraq's broken parliament on saturday. The new law, passed with barely 145 of parliament's 275 seats occupied. The law, window dressing allegedly to benefit predominantly Sunni ex-baathists, was boycotted by 2 blocs totaling 55 Sunni seats, and enthusiastically voted for by Shi'a and Kurdish members.
There is no indication that the surge is working for it's advertised goal to be accomplished...to "buy time" for the Iraqi government to get it's shit togather. Last month the same parliament closed on December 7, for the rest of the month.
You want to be vindicated so badly, if you've supported the illegal invasion and botched US occupation. Iraq is shattered and it will divide into at least three parts, a victory for Iran, unless the US further wrecks it's own future by contriving enough of a provocation to attack Iran.
The surge, to buy time, is a farce, as were the accusations of, and then the hunt for,WMD. The surge is to buy time for GW Bush to save face.
Quote:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...cid=1126228904
Iraq votes to lift ban on ex-Baathists
The legislation, a top U.S. priority, will allow lower-tier members of Saddam Hussein's party to take government jobs.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 13, 2008
BAGHDAD -- Iraq's parliament approved a bill Saturday allowing members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to government jobs, overcoming months of paralysis to pass the first piece of the so-called benchmark legislation the United States has deemed crucial to national reconciliation.
The Bush administration had argued that its troop buildup in Iraq last year would offer breathing room to the country's warring factions, allowing them to make progress on the political front. The legislation was introduced in the parliament in March, but had remained stalled.
Even as violence declined in recent months, Iraq's Shiite and Sunni leaders squabbled and failed to take major steps toward ending the country's sectarian war. Key legislation on dismantling militias, sharing the country's oil wealth, setting election procedures and outlining the relationship between central and provincial powers continues to languish....
....President Bush, who is traveling in the region, called the legislation "an important step toward reconciliation." During a stop in Bahrain, Bush also said it was "an important sign that the leaders in that country must work together and meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people."
But sectarian divisions remain deep in Iraq, and it is unclear whether the new law will have much effect. Critics charge that the legislation is window-dressing.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remained notably cautious, declining to comment until it finished reviewing the draft. The legislation has been through various versions as it made its way through Iraq's halls of power.
The Accountability and Justice Law, as it is called, abolishes the de-Baathification committee, which its detractors accused of firing competent state employees for little reason and using membership in the Baath Party as an excuse for carrying out a political agenda. Some state employers were subject to blackmail by people who threatened to name them to the committee unless they paid up.
"If this law changes the process sufficiently from this inquisition process set up by the Coalition Provisional Authority, it would be a step forward," said a U.S. diplomat who has worked on Iraq issues, referring to the quasi-government that Bremer headed.
The legislation calls for a seven-member national board and a general prosecutor who will investigate current cases, and for Iraq's Justice Ministry to pick seven judges for an appeals court. In a show of tensions, the lawmakers struck down an amendment that would have required that the board be representative of Iraq's sects and ethnicities.
But the new law will not reverse Bremer's original decree barring from the government members of the top four echelons of the Baath Party, though it provides them with pensions.
"This law deals with the Baathists as individuals. . . . It distinguishes between the criminal and the innocent," government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said in an interview with Al Arabiya satellite television channel. "This law is changing [the de-Baathification committee] into a professional judiciary authority far from any political positions."
Until recently, the committee continued to purge people from the ministries and the military on the basis of party membership. In the summer of 2006, even after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was selected to head a "national unity" government, some technocrats and security officials were fired from the interior, defense and agriculture ministries with little justification.
In one of the most famous cases, Adnan Janabi, a minister without portfolio in 2004 under then-interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was blocked from serving in the current parliament on account of his Baath Party membership.
"The law is one thing. Another is how it will be implemented. As everyone knows, Maliki and those in his camp are not thrilled about having to do anything, but we've been pushing them hard," the U.S. diplomat said.
Critics of the legislation suspect the new body will be manipulated by the same parties that dominated the old committee. They also worry that any Baathists who seek jobs will be targeted by paramilitary groups.
"I wouldn't come back to my job because of this law," <h3>Sunni parliament member Saleh Mutlak said. "It's humiliating to the people. You have to condemn yourself, and then be investigated, and then you could be killed [by someone] after going to the committee."
The vote itself showed how divided Iraqis remain on the matter. Barely 150 members of the 275-seat parliament attended the session.
Mutlak's National Dialogue Front, with 11 seats, and some members of another Sunni bloc, the 44-seat Iraqi Accordance Front, boycotted the vote.</h3> All major Shiite parties in attendance voted for the legislation, including 30 lawmakers loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr. But if some endorsed the measure, others skipped the session rather than vote for a proposal they vehemently opposed.
"I consider this law as a pure American law aiming to restore the Baath Party to the political process," said Sadr lawmaker Maha Adil Mehdi, who boycotted the session. "I refuse this law completely."
Others whose parties have been associated with the mass purges and even attacks on former Baathists backed the law.
"From the beginning, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council was backing this law because there are many people suffering from this law and others are using this law to revenge and to gain more authority," said parliament member Hamid Mualla, a member of the party.
The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni party in parliament, endorsed the legislation as a compromise. "We want to push the national reconciliation ahead and calm things down among the Iraqis, and this might not help a lot," said Nureddine Hayali, a lawmaker with the party.
But the biggest question remains how the law will be applied and whether Shiite hard-liners will work to block former Baathists from returning.
"We know there are certain ministries who opposed this and are in a position to deny jobs to people who would benefit from legislation," said analyst Wayne White, head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team from 2003 to 2005. "There are people at the local level who have the power to sabotage."
ned.parker@latimes.com
Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Saif Rasheed, Said Rifai and Caesar Ahmed in Baghdad and James Gerstenzang in Bahrain contributed to this report.
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If you missed my thread detailing the necon attack on and sabotage of Juan Cole and his career, catch up here:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=127679&highlight=juan+cole+yale">Iraq:"It can be saved and won", Can You Be Reliably Informed Yet Have That Opinion?</a>
Quote:
http://www.juancole.com/2008/01/so-b...y-is-that.html
Sunday, January 13, 2008
New Iraqi Law on Baath Worries Ex-Baathists
.....The passage of the new law will be hailed by the War party as a major achievement. But as usual they will misread what really happened.
If the new law was good for ex-Baathists, then the ex-Baathists in parliament will have voted for it and praised it, right? And likely the Sadrists (hard line anti-Baath Shiites) and Kurds would be a little upset.
Instead, parliament's version of this law was spearheaded by Sadrists, and the ex-Baathists in parliament criticized it.
Somehow that little drawback suggests to me that the law is not actually, as written, likely to be good for sectarian reconciliation.
<a href="http://www.asharqalawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&issue=10638&article=453776">Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic</a> that the parliamentarians who criticized the law were drawn from the National Dialogue Council led by ex-Baathist Salih Mutlak, from the Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi (an ex-Baathist), and from two of the three parties that make up the Sunni Arab National Accord Front.
So the parties in parliament that have the strong Baathist legacy did not like the law one little bit. But they are the ones that it was intended to mollify!
Parliament has been able to get a quorum on several recent occasions, and barely mustered a quorum on Saturday, with 143 members in attendance out of 275. The new law passed with a narrow majority. The vote count was not published anywhere I could find it, but it could have been as low as 72.
Now, when the Iraqi cabinet of PM Nuri al-Maliki initially introduced the draft bill into parliament last November 25, the Sadr Movement deputies rhythmically pounded their desks in protest. The Sadrists have a special and abiding hatred for the Baath Party, which killed both major clergymen that they venerate, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (d. 1980) and Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (d. 1999). But on Saturday the Sadrists spoke for the new law. Very suspicious.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that the current head of the De-Baathification Commission, Falah Hasan Shanshal, is a member of the Sadr Movement. He said, "The law was legislated to punish anyone who committed a crime against the children of the Iraqi people . . . and in tandem, to provide that anyone who had not committed crimes must retire. Those persons may also return to public life, with the exception that some cannot work as bureaucrats in the judicial, ministerial or security bureaucracies, or in the ministries of Foreign Affairs or Finance. He added that "everyone agreed on punishing the Baath Party as a party that committed crimes against the Iraqi people." He expressed the hope that the law would be quickly ratified by the presidential council.
Baha' al-A`raji is a Sadrist and the chairman of the Legislative Committee in parliament. He said that the law in its current form differs essentially from the bill that was sent over from the cabinet. Al-A`raji told al-Sharq al-Awsat that "Some members could not vote for some passages or articles in the current version of the law . . . or could not accept the law in its entirety. But a majority of parliament voted for the law." He added that the law "took into account all the suggestions of the Sadr Movement." The Sadrists had demanded that the De-Baathification Commission not be dissolved, but would accept a change in name for it. They had demanded that the Baath Party remain dissolved, and that the high-ranking members of the party be forbidden to enter the new political life or serve as bureaucrats. The Sadrists had also insisted that any high-ranking Baathists presently employed by the new Iraqi government must be fired!
The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries.
Al-A'raji was completely unsympathetic to opponents of the law, which he said was now unstoppable.
Members of the Iraqi National Front (Allawi's group), the National Dialogue Front (Mutlak), and two of the three constituent parties of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni Arabs), along with some IAF independents, denounced the law in a circulated, signed letter. They said that the law would be "difficult to implement." They indicated that they had not voted for it and do not support it. They called it "unrealistic" because it contains an article forbidding the Baath Party "from returning to power ideologically, administratively, politically or in practice, and under any other name." The law's opponents charged that this language was unconstitutionally vague and could easily be "misused."
What are the ex-Baathists afraid of? Well, they are ex-Baathists in politics. So this objectionable passage seems to make it possible for the Sadrists, e.g., to keep people like Iyad Allawi from ever again enjoying high office. His secular, nationalist Iraqi National Dialogue party could easily just be branded too close to the original Baath Party and dissolved, and he could be excluded from high office by this new provision.....
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Last edited by host; 01-13-2008 at 01:56 AM..
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