Mission Accomplished! Chimper holds his piss & vinegar until after the Nov elections

Will a coup in Iraq follow the US elections?

WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq
Will a coup in Iraq follow the US elections?
By James Cogan
5 October 2006

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Another comment has appeared in the American press foreshadowing a move by the Bush administration to remove the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. In an opinion piece in the October 2 Washington Post, the newspaper’s deputy editorial editor Jackson Diehl strongly suggested that Washington may dispense with Maliki’s regime shortly after the November 7 US congressional elections.

Diehl’s column on Monday is part of a series of articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post that have the flavour of planted stories by the White House and Pentagon to condition public opinion for a US-organised coup in Baghdad. A relentless campaign is being conducted to portray Maliki’s government as incapable of controlling the Shiite militias involved in the country’s escalating sectarian civil war.

Diehl reported that the “central question for discussion” was whether Washington could rely on Maliki to “stabilise the country” or whether it was “necessary to override the new political system and mount some sort of intervention, led by the United States and perhaps other governments, to force the necessary deals” between rival Shiite and Sunni organisations.

Diehl left little doubt as to the answer. He damned Maliki for “still resisting forceful steps against Shiite militias” and because “negotiations with Sunni insurgents have gone nowhere”. Following the US elections, he wrote, the debate “should take centre stage”.