US interfering in Iraqi Affairs.

US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has apparently passed a message on to the shia list that President Bush himself will not accept Jafari as Prime Minister. It is indeed unnacceptable for the US to involve itself in Iraq's affairs in this way, especially with the shia list furious over the murders of around 20 worshippers at a baghdad mosque by the US army earlier this week, although with 133,000 US troops stationed in the country it shouldn't come as a surprise that the US is making a mockery of Iraq's sovereignty.

Some shia are refering to Zalmay Khalilzad's current one-sidedness in his approach to them as being an indicator of 'The second great US betrayal', with the first betrayal being the US leaving Saddam to slaughter the shia back in 1991, after Bush I had called on them to rise up. Indeed, the succesful sunni insurgency has made the US rethink their approach to the Iraq situation and there has now been a convergence of US-Sunni interests. However, they are trying to mollify the sunnis at the expense of the shia and it is a risky game they are playing. The success of the minority sunni's tactic of bombing their way back to the negotiating table is down, in no small part, to the fact that they made up the majority of Iraq's military class under Saddam and thy have utilised their expertise to deadly effect.

But the shia have organised militias, some trained by Iran, like the Badr Brigade, and some with previous experience of battle against the US, like Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army and their sheer number should surely put the US off antagonising this community. Indeed Badr's political wing, SCIRI, have called for Khalilzad to be expelled from Iraq and other members of the shia political elite have called on the US to hand security responsibility to them. If indeed Bush has deemed Jafari to be unacceptable to him, he is once again showing his ignorance of the reality on the ground in Iraq. By pursuing this path of provoking the shia, he may be nailing the coffin shut on his own Iraq project, whatever that was. To this day, it is still unclear as to why he really invaded Iraq. Was it to bring democracy to Iraq and empower the shia islamists? Not likely. Was it to disarm Saddam of his WMD's? They have been proved to be a myth.Was it to make Iraq a long-term base for US imperial goals? How long does he think the Iraqi people will tolerate the occupation, especially when he prods the majority of it's population the way he is doing through Khalilzad? Some say his only goal was to bring sectarian strife and chaos to Iraq. If so he has succeeded. However his own armed forces, and much more importantly, the Iraqi people may pay a huge price in blood for doing so.