The Common Ills: Will Iraq name a president today?

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Will Iraq name a president today?

A day that starts with a headline proclaiming "Gunmen control Nineveh Pharmaceutical plant, head to Nineveh Dam," is not a good day for thug and prime minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki.

Nouri has spent how many weeks and months now trying to hold onto parts of Iraq that were not 'break aways' in 2013?

It's July -- near the end of July -- so there's your answer: Seven months.

Seven months and he still can't get it together because he refuses to initiate a political system that values and includes people not part of his State of Law political coalition.

National Iraqi News Agency reports the Iraqi military says they killed 15 suspects in Jurf al-Sakar (all burned alive in air strikes), they also brag about burning to death 23 other suspects in an aerial bombing of Rawa, and 3 Peshmerga were kidnapped north of Mosul.

The Iraqi military claim they killed a commander here and another there. These are suspects, they don't know who they're killing, they lack the intelligence and equipment to pull off even the grotesque air targeting the US government could (so-called 'precision strikes' which still kill multiple innocents). The lack of intelligence is one of the reasons the White House was reluctant to allow Nouri to have US air strikes -- they didn't trust what US troops could not verify. Another reason was that the fear was Nouri would use the US military to target his political rivals -- he has a long history of targeting his political rivals including having tanks surround their homes or invade their homes in the middle of the night.

What's really going on is that the bulk of the 'brags' Nouri's forces have on killings are from air bombings. It's as though Iraq has no ground forces at all -- or none that will go out on missions.

In other news, All Iraq News notes former Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq is vying for the post of President of Iraq. There are many reasons that qualifies as news -- the main one most likely being that al-Mutlaq is a Sunni and Kurds feel they have the right to the post of President -- they feel only they have that right. (And Sunnis did claim the post of Speaker of Parliament already this month.)

Another reason it's news is that there's hope (misguided or valid) that a president might be picked today. NINA explains, "A special session held by the House of Representatives for the election of the president of the republic with presence of 236 deputies this afternoon. It is scheduled that during this hearing the election of the president and his two deputies would take place."

Yesterday, there were thought to be as many as 100 people who would be vying for the post. All Iraq News explains this morning that 8 candidates have already been tossed by the so-called Justice and Accountability Commission and that Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq's Ammar al-Hakim has declared, "I call all the nominees of the non-Kurdish community to reconsider or cancel their nomination for the President Post in order to avoid any surprises that might accompany the nomination process because this post is a merit for the Kurds." Sinan Salaheddin (AP) notes that two Kurds are considered front runners for the post "former deputy prime minister Barham Saleh and the Kirkuk provincial governor Najimaldin Karim."

The following community sites -- plus Antiwar.com and Black Agenda Report -- updated: