Word: iraqi
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Once seen as an American puppet, Iyad Allawi is the new Comeback Kid of Iraqi politics. The results of the general election announced Friday, March 26, show that Allawi's secular Iraqiya block has won 91 seats in the 325-seat Iraqi parliament - well short of a majority, but two more than its nearest rival, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law slate...
...will contest the results and demand recounts. Even if the results announced today hold up to scrutiny, there's a chance al-Maliki will be able to pull together a coalition to form the new government and retain the Prime Ministership. Meanwhile, the main Shi'ite bloc, the National Iraqi Alliance, won 70 seats; the main Kurdish alliance got 43. A simple majority of 163 seats is needed to govern. (See a 2004 interview with then Prime Minister Allawi...
...showed no interest in playing a constructive role in opposition. Indeed, he was rarely in Baghdad at all, spending most of his time in Jordan and other Arab states. When I asked him about this in 2007, he cited concerns about his security in Baghdad - but plenty of other Iraqi leaders, not to speak of ordinary citizens, were braving death threats...
...Zone. In it, the Washington Post reporter detailed the arrogance and naiveté of the young zealots the Bush Administration sent to pacify Iraq: how they frolicked beside Green Zone swimming pools as if Baghdad were spring-break Fort Lauderdale, handed out tens of millions in cash to American and Iraqi connivers and blithely mismanaged the occupation into chaos...
...Iraqis are getting good at elections. On Sunday they went to the polls--for the fifth time since the fall of Saddam Hussein--to choose a new parliament despite election-day violence that killed 38. U.S. President Barack Obama congratulated Iraqis for voting "with enthusiasm and optimism." But running elections is one thing; running Iraq is another. The general election of 2005 empowered ethnic and sectarian leaders who proved incapable of compromise and took the country to the brink of civil war. The surge of U.S. troops in 2007 bought just enough security and time to give democracy one more...