Word: sectarianism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...zero - Iraqi army units currently operating independent of U.S. forces. The Pentagon's inspector general has reported they lack the men, the weapons, the trucks - pretty much everything - to be ready to fight. Meanwhile, the Iraq Study Group said the police units were almost completely corrupt or infiltrated by sectarian militias. It is a little hard to square those reports with the way the President talked about the new U.S. partners in the surge last night...
...weakest link in Bush's plan is that it depends on the cooperation of Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. After a phone conference with the Iraqi leader, Pres. Bush said al-Maliki had promised U.S. forces would be given a free hand, and that "political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated." Such interference has in the past blighted U.S. efforts to curb the Shi'ite militias responsible for most of the sectarian killing, especially in Baghdad...
...Here's the problem: the person who did most of the interfering, arguably, was al-Maliki himself. Although he nominally heads an all-party, national unity government, al-Maliki is a Shi'ite partisan, and he has pursued a blatantly sectarian course in the eight months since he was sworn in, antagonizing Sunnis and allowing Shi'ite militias to run amok. His main political backing comes from Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand leader of the most dangerous militia, the Mahdi Army. In his speeches, al-Maliki routinely promises to deal firmly with the militias, but in practice, he has always...
While it's not surprising that Lebanese have sought refuge in cinema from the country's sectarian tensions, it does seem strange that many of them are going to see a movie about, at least in part, sectarian tension in the United States. When it opened on Thanksgiving, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was the third most watched movie in Lebanon, trailing only such blockbuster fare as Casino Royale...
...hollow. Saddam’s status as one of this and last century’s most ruthless tyrants has not been brought into question, nor should it ever. Instead, al-Rubaie’s prediction seems laughable because Saddam’s execution was overrun by the endless sectarian violence that has come to dominate this new page in Iraqi history, which may be just as dark as Saddam’s. Hussein’s trial and execution were supposed to provide a historical reckoning, a sense of closure, and an opportunity for the Iraqis to establish...