Word: iraqi
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...never expect a presidential peacock to be succinct or acute enough in these bloviathons). Obama hit Petraeus and Crocker with an artful series of questions about the two main threats: Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran. He noted that al-Qaeda had been rejected by the Iraqi Sunnis and chased to the northern city of Mosul. If U.S. and Iraqi troops succeeded there, what was next? He proposed: "Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace of al-Qaeda but rather to create a manageable situation where they're not posing a threat...
...Obama's question was slightly disingenuous. Few people believe that the Sunni Awakening movement-the insurgents who flipped to our side after a fling with al-Qaeda-would stay peaceful if the U.S. military weren't there as a buffer between them and the Shi'ites. The Iraqi army remains a mess of militias in camouflage. But we have had a significant success in Iraq and dealt al-Qaeda-style extremism a resounding defeat. So why not continue the judicious withdrawal that has begun...
Lesson One: The Americans don't have as tight a hold on the government of Nouri al-Mailiki as one might think. Many Iraqis hostile to the government take Maliki to be little more than an American stooge. But Petraeus revealed to lawmakers that Maliki went against his advice in launching an attack against the Mahdi Army in Basra, where Maliki's forces were quickly bogged down and bloodied by Sadr's street fighters. That means the Americans may not have the ability to stop the Iraqi government from an even worse strategic blunder in a place where Sunni insurgents...
Lesson Two: You can rattle the Americans and the Iraqi government considerably by attacking the Green Zone. Blasts in the enclave where the Iraqi government and the American command stay had fallen off steeply until the most recent wave of fighting. In recent months people inside the Green Zone felt safer and maybe a little bolder - possibly one reason for picking a fight in Basra. But a steady hail of rockets falling on and around Iraqi government buildings suddenly got Maliki talking about a political compromise with Sadr, at least for a time. In other words, the "heavily fortified" Green...
...sectarian Muslim disputation in Baghdad, but in Dublin, it's a relative novelty. Refugees from Iraq are a new feature of predominantly Catholic Ireland's growing Muslim community - estimated by its leaders to number around 40,000, making it Ireland's third largest religion - and many have brought their Iraqi rivalries with them into exile. While the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Dublin are Sunnis, the trend is reversed among the Iraqi immigrant population...