{"id":196510,"date":"2008-04-18T17:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-18T22:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/18\/an-insight-into-the-clusterf-in-basra\/"},"modified":"2008-04-18T17:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-18T22:06:00","slug":"an-insight-into-the-clusterf-in-basra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/18\/an-insight-into-the-clusterf-in-basra\/","title":{"rendered":"An Insight into the Clusterf%$# in Basra"},"content":{"rendered":"

It now appears that Petraeus has had a plan of a massive US offensive in Basra for some time, and Nouri al-Maliki, fearful of the political blow-back from US operations there, launched his own campaign last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The last three paras reveal that the politics here are Byzantine: <\/p>\n

Bush administration suspicions of al-Maliki’s intentions could not have been eased by the fact that a delegation of pro-government parties traveled to Iran to ask the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to negotiate a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army. That ploy move, which did result in a tenuous ceasefire, raised the possibility that al-Maliki intended from the beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement that would prevent the deployment of U.S. and British troops to fight the Mahdi Army during the summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bush administration officials have been asserting that the most important thing about the Basra operation is that al-Maliki is now convinced that Iran is really an enemy rather than a friend. But al-Maliki’s Apr. 7 interview with CNN’s Robertson made it clear that he has not budged from his position that his government’s interests lie in an accord between Iran and the United States — not in taking sides against Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We will always reject the idea of any side using Iraq as a launching pad for its attack on others,” said al-Maliki. “We reject Iran using Iraq to attack the U.S., and at the same time we reject the idea of the U.S. using Iraq to attack Iran…”<\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why the hell are we in there again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It now appears that Petraeus has had a plan of a massive US offensive in Basra for some time, and Nouri al-Maliki, fearful of the political blow-back from US operations there, launched his own campaign last month. The last three paras reveal that the politics here are Byzantine: Bush administration suspicions of al-Maliki’s intentions could …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[981,1034,1063],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-iran","category-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}