Bad News From Baghdad

This doesn't appear to be very good news out of Baghdad. It could be disastrous.

Maliki has made his first real move since President Bush's speech. He's appointed a military commander for Baghdad that Iraqi politicians and US Command don't know a great deal about - Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar. And he did it over objections from the US while passing over a said to be more qualified officer.

The new commander is from a Shi'ite dominated area of Iraq. If all Maliki is going to do is mouth the words without taking the right steps, any surge operation is doomed to fail.

Damn.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen over the objections of U.S. and Iraqi military commanders, officials from both governments said.

Maliki's decision to push through his own choice for one of the country's most sensitive military posts — and to reject another officer who was considered more qualified by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey — has renewed questions about the prime minister's intentions.

"It's a delicate situation," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who questioned the choice of Qanbar. "It's very dangerous if it turns out that he has affiliations," he said, naming Maliki's political party and the anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr.

U.S. officials are skeptical of Qanbar not only because of the way he was named, but because they know little about him. Moreover, they have questioned the degree to which Maliki's government is reliant on sectarian figures, particularly Sadr. Maliki essentially is asking American officials to take Qanbar on trust at a time when they have little left.

Qanbar, a commander in the navy during Saddam Hussein's reign, has not worked with American military officials, who say they know little about him other than that he hails from Amarah, a city in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, and that he was taken prisoner by American forces near Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Comments

[Carl]

Hey, how's that surge going? Win any hearts and minds lately?

[grandma]

How sad. Our nephew is on his way back to Iraq after surviving a his humvee running over a landmine which, thank God, was buried too deep. He was knocked out for 2 hours and still has headaches but apparently good enough to go back to Bush's ambush zone or what I like to refer to it "Daddy's Revenge".

[MinorRipper]

this dude Malicki is toast...can't we just have Halliburton take over this war for us??
www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com

[Purple Avenger]

If he's no good, he can just have an accident.

[kyly]

Please keep embarrassing Mr Bush. Hopefully suicide is in his future!!