McCAIN/PALIN "SPIN" IRAQ VICTORY. HERE IS THE REAL TRUTH

Spinning Iraq for a GOP Victory

By Patrick Cockburn, Independent UKPosted on September 3, 2008, Printed on September 6, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/97511/

Political events in Iraq are seldom what they seem.

The handover by the U.S. military of control of Anbar province, once the heartland of the Sunni rebellion, to Iraqi forces is a case in point.

The U.S. will keep 25,000 American soldiers in Anbar, so the extent to which the Iraqi government will really take over is debatable. But the future of Anbar is a crucial pointer to the fate of Iraq. It is a vast area and one of the few parts of Iraq that is overwhelmingly Sunni.

The Iraqi government is dominated by Shia Islamic parties in alliance with Kurdish nationalists.

The vital question now is whether or not this Shia-dominated government can reassure the Sunni minority that they are not going to be overrun as the U.S. withdraws its forces. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is in a very confident mood. In the past four months he feels he has successfully faced down the Shia militiamen of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army by taking back control of Basra, Sadr City and Amarah.

Then he refused to sign a new security accord with the U.S. which President George Bush wanted to see agreed by August 31st.

In the past few weeks he has been confronting his Kurdish allies over the future of the oil city of Kirkuk and the town of Khanaqin.

Maliki may be overplaying his hand but there is no doubt that the Iraqi state is becoming more powerful in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, the Americans and the Kurds less so. The Americans in particular feel that he exaggerates the extent to which his success against the Mahdi Army was because of the new strength of the Iraqi security forces. These troops were doing badly until they received American support.

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