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80,000 Well-Armed, Angry Sunnis
After watching video clips of Obama saying "typical white person" 500 times, you may want to pay attention to a story of 80,000 angry Sunnis threatening to strike and reduce Iraq to total chaos.
At issue are the Concerned Local Citizens groups (CLCs) that we have been paying for over a year not to kill us and instead to defend their territories and drive out Al Qaeda in Iraq. You could not set up a more potentially unstable situation if you tried. The CLCs have no fealty to the national government; in fact they are if anything oppositional to it. The Shiites in power are afraid of incorporating the CLCs into the Iraqi security forces. It has been alleged that the CLCs include former insurgents and rogues, and they are primarily interested in 1) receiving money, and 2) defending their corner of Iraq from all invaders, foreign and domestic. This is not a path to national reconciliation but balkanization.
And then the military and the Administration went and did the worst thing possible - they forgot to pay everyone on time. That's right - the incompetents that still reign throughout the Bush Administration aren't paying the bills. And so we may see a general strike.
The success of the US "surge" strategy in Iraq may be under threat as Sunni militia employed by the US to fight al-Qaida are warning of a national strike because they are not being paid regularly.
Leading members of the 80,000-strong Sahwa, or awakening, councils have said they will stop fighting unless payment of their $10 a day (£5) wage is resumed. The fighters are accusing the US military of using them to clear al-Qaida militants from dangerous areas and then abandoning them.
A telephone survey by GuardianFilms for Channel 4 News reveals that out of 49 Sahwa councils four with more than 1,400 men have already quit, 38 are threatening to go on strike and two already have.
Improved security in Iraq in recent months has been attributed to a combination of the surge, the truce observed by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, and the effectiveness and commitment of the councils, which are drawn from Sunni Arabs and probably the most significant factor, according to most analysts.
The military is using these Sunni forces to "do their dirty work," as one council head put it, and now they aren't even holding up their end of the bargain. Also, the fact that none of the CLC members are being allowed to get jobs in the Iraqi security forces is causing a lot of tension.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/21/iraq.alqaida
A huge militia of well armed and angry sunnis.
That the shia government in Baghdad wants nothing to do with, and in fact fears.
And if we don't keep paying these sunni warlords, they might get totally pissed at us.
Could bush have created a worse clusterf*ck?
Arbusto, an oil exploration company, lost money, but it got considerable investments (nearly $5 million) because even losing oil investments were useful as tax shelters.
Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. bought out Arbusto in 1984 and hired Mr. Bush to run the company's oil interests in Midland, Texas. The oil business collapsed as oil prices plummeted by 1986, and Spectrum 7 Energy was near failure.
Harken Energy acquired Mr. Bush's Spectrum 7 Energy shares, and he got Harken shares, a directorship, and a consulting arrangement in return. Harken, under Bush, brought in Saudi real estate tycoon Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh as a board member and a major investor. Over the next few years, Harken would turn out to have links to: Saudi money, CIA-connected Filipinos, the Harvard Endowment, the emir of Bahrain, and the shadowy Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
A 1991 internal SEC document suggested George W. Bush violated federal securities law at least 4 times in the late 1980s and early 1990s in selling Harken stock while serving as a director of Harken. This is essentially the same kind of activity that Martha Stewart is going to prison over. Except at the time of the investigation, Mr. Bush's father was president and the case was quietly dropped.
A huge militia of well armed and angry sunnis.
That the shia government in Baghdad wants nothing to do with, and in fact fears.
And if we don't keep paying these sunni warlords, they might get totally pissed at us.
Could bush have created a worse clusterf*ck?
It's all about money. With enough, you could get a chimp elected.
Oops, that was redundant.
I suppose you are familiar with his success as a business man also?
The sons are not quite as good as Grampa and now Dad with Carlyle. Silverado, Broward Savings and Loan.....Texas Rangers,
Sure. Bush created AQ, Sunni and Shia muslims and made them start killing anythign that wasn't them just to give you something to drip tears all over this board about
A huge militia of well armed and angry sunnis.
That the shia government in Baghdad wants nothing to do with, and in fact fears.
And if we don't keep paying these sunni warlords, they might get totally pissed at us.
Could bush have created a worse clusterf*ck?
Not automatically.
It means just, that the service they provide will stop. Maybe turning blind eye to regrouping Al Qaeda in that area. So these Sunni militias have a standpoint in possible negotiations with USA. For me it reads like they want more money. I can not believe, that USA is not paying these militias as this is a important point of the surge particularily.
