Iraq: Israeli influence concerns Sunnis

[leftchick]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B474A467-678F-4AF3-BBD0-CC4E8A398EE4.htm

<snip>
Iraq's most influential Arab Sunni scholar Dr Harith al-Dhari has said he is concerned over "shady rooms" in which the issues of Iraq are being discussed.

Dr al-Dhari who descends from a family well known for resisting the British occupation of Iraq early in the twentieth century, is the secretary-general of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the highest Sunni authority in Iraq, which wants "liberation before elections".

He says "the UN team will achieve no success". He believes elections and the transition of power are worthless as long as Iraq is under occupation.

He denies Iraqi Arab Sunnis do not want elections, fearing they would loose: "The Sunnis in Iraq are more than half of the population, and they might reach 60% of Iraqi people, that is according to the calculations we trust" he said, "the figures quoted for the Shia majority in Iraq are a lie that until now we have not disputed for the sake of national unity."

[Cary]

1. This is the problem.

No one in their right mind ever thought we would have much of a problem rolling over Saddam. The question has always been: what comes afterward.

I think the neo-con notion, that we can have our way with everyone, is bunk. I'm sure I'll get no argument on that. Iraq is an incredibly dysfunctional place, for all kinds of reasons. Of course Saddam did everything he could do to make it that way. But the problems predate Saddam. The problems run rampant throughout the Middle East, and date back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

I'm not privvy to the thinking that goes on in Washington. It doesn't seem to me like much thinking is going on there. To me, this article confirms that proposition. War unleashes all kinds of undesirable forces and those forces appear to be brewing.

A few Sunnis, some Kurds, some Shiites. . . A recipe for what? Or does Bush have a magic wand somewhere and, poof, we have a Democracy?