Christian Science Monitor reports:
The US is warning that it could cut substantial funding to Iraq’s Health, Education, and Transport ministries if the anti-American Sadr bloc is given those cabinet posts in a new government being formed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The comments by a senior US embassy official were the clearest public statements yet of US determination to try to limit the influence of the Sadr movement if it continues to rebuff American overtures. The hardline Shiite bloc won the single biggest number of seats in the Iraqi parliament in March 7 elections but refuses to meet with American officials.
“We accept and understand there are going to be Sadrist ministers, but some of the ministries that have been mentioned in the press as potentially going to the Sadrists happen to be ministries that we look at very closely,” said the embassy official in an interview with the Monitor on Saturday. “We hope that if Sadrists are able to head those ministries, they will be able to take a more pragmatic approach than they have in the past, because it would be a terrible shame for the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people if we were no longer able to run the very substantial education programs we’re running in Iraq.”
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cited the education, health, and transport ministries as those which could become impossible to support if the Sadrists continued to oppose dealing with the US. He declined to specify which Iraqi ministries the US would have no problem in seeing the Sadr bloc running.
How about restricting US access (an embargo) to Iraqi oil, or better still that they are made to pay full war damages and compensation for the illegal war of aggression and occupation of Iraq. What would that be worth?
Enough is enough of American imperialist messing with other people’s countries. Time to go, there is no mandate at home, in the UN, or abroad. There never was. Just like the security threat, or WMD that never were. Yankee go home and take your blood money, your war and your corruption with you!
So, there you go, Obama=Bush…it must be the food at the White House, or the water!
Do you remember the Lebanese and Palestinian elections, how we pushed for election and then didn’t accept the results?
Were I an Arab I would think: An infidel president is an infidel president, doesn’t matter what his race!
While you rage over what Obama is doing with Iraqi sovereignty, look at what he’s doing with the Israeli-Palestinian Peace negotiations that got him a Nobel Prize:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111605647_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120707310_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120803317_pf.html