Word: baghdad
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...Already unpopular with Sunnis - who view him as a Shi'ite partisan - he has also lost what little credibility he had with his cosectarians. As a result, his writ doesn't run very far outside of the artificial bubble of Baghdad's Green Zone...
There's a reason why Iraqis aren't holding their breath over the Amman summit: Viewed from Baghdad, both George Bush and Nuri al-Maliki are lame ducks. As he winds down his second term, the American president is burdened with a hostile Senate and Congress - not to mention mounting public dissatisfaction with his performance. The Iraqi Prime Minister is less than six months into his first term, and already he faces the same problems...
...figure: Over the weekend, he endured the ignominy of having his convoy booed and pelted with stones by his fellow Shi'ites in Sadr City, where he had gone to pay condolences after a series of car bombs killed over 215 people on Thanksgiving Day. As al-Maliki left Baghdad, the Iraqi capital was wracked by continuing violence, and his key political allies were threatening to boycott parliament over his decision to meet with Bush...
...impressed me as a leader who wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so," Hadley said, according to an extract of the memo published by the New York Times. "But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into actions...
...idea of detaching Maliki from his own political base already seemed more than a little implausible. And as he left Baghdad for the meeting, Maliki's key coalition partner, the parliamentary bloc headed by the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr, announced that it would suspend participation in the government, potentially leaving the Prime Minister's parliamentary majority in doubt. Last weekend, Sadr had warned that he would withdraw support for Maliki if the Prime Minister took the meeting with Bush in Jordan. But while Sadr appears to have told Maliki to choose him or choose the U.S., the Hadley...