In this morning's New York Times, Edward Wong files "Iraqi Premier Blames Politicians for Violence." There's a lot to cover (it's the only article on Iraq filed from Iraq that I'm seeing), he has to grab the violence, the policy, etc. A healthy chunk goes to the puppet, Nouri al-Maliki. Here's a section:
In the afternoon, Mr. Maliki attended a funeral in Sadr City, the district bombed Thursday and a base of support for Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric who lends political support to Mr. Maliki. The funeral was for four brothers killed in the bombings, a Sadr official said. Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, is believed responsible for many of the directed killings here.
Despite a curfew in Baghdad in effect since the Thursday bombings, deadly violence continued.
And that's it. Wong's moved on. If you read "And the war drags on" last night, you know he shouldn't be done. You know that what happened at the funeral was both "news" and more important than any of the self-serving statements he gave yesterday. From Mussab Al-Khairalla and Alastair Macdonald's "Calls for calm as crowd stones Iraq PM" (Reuters):
The motorcade of Iraq's prime minister was pelted with stones on Sunday by fellow Shi'ites in a Baghdad slum when he paid respects to some of the 200 who died there last week in the deadliest attack since the U.S. invasion.
The anger in Sadr City, stronghold of the Medhi Army Shi'ite militia, boiled over on the third day of a curfew imposed on the capital by Nuri al-Maliki's U.S.-backed national unity coalition as it scrambled desperately to stop popular passions exploding into all-out civil war between Shi'ites and the Sunni minority.
"It's all your fault!" one man shouted as, in unprecedented scenes, a crowd began to surge around Maliki. Men and youths then jeered and jostled as his armored convoy edged through the throng away from a mourning ceremony for one of the 202 victims of Thursday's multiple car bomb attack in Sadr City.
That's an important detail and one that captures the regard that al-Maliki is held in. As civil war continues and the US attempts to figure out what to do, people should know about that incident, that rather telling incident.
The AP reports that Iraq's president Jalal Talabani can now visit Iran, Baghdad International is once again open. Of course, the meet up with the presidents of Syria and Iran was scheduled for Saturday.
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the new york times
edward wong
