Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...There was a crisis. Dramatic action was indicated. The President was anxious to go on the offensive after the Democratic election victories and before the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report. He was going to press al-Maliki to do something unpleasant-perhaps move against the most powerful Shi'ite militia, the Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Maliki seemed to be resisting Bush's pressure. He snubbed the President, refusing to meet him in the evening...
...York Times in the days before the summit. First there was the report that Hizballah was training members of al-Sadr's militia. This placed in one bull's-eye almost all Bush's favorite evildoers-Hizballah; Iran and Syria (which support Hizballah); and al-Sadr, whose Shi'ite organization has been responsible for much of the recent violence against Sunnis in Iraq. The slap-Sadr scenario had some powerful covert supporters, especially among Sunni governments. The Saudis had summoned Dick Cheney to Riyadh on Nov. 25 in order to convey, among other things, their distress with the rise...
...Iraq Study Group? The group's underlying assumption is that Iraqi forces will be ready to take over from the U.S. military by early 2008. To test that thesis, it is instructive to look at parts of southern Iraq from which coalition forces have already been withdrawn. There Shi'ite militias backed by Iran have taken control, intimidating government forces into submission and terrorizing Sunnis. On several occasions Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, has had to plead with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to restrain his fighters from killing soldiers and police--with limited results...
...martial anthems played on a gigantic stereo system sounded the same theme, accusing the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of collaborating with Israel and the United States in their plans to redraw the map of the Middle East and bomb Hizballah into submission. Put simply by a Shi'ite schoolgirl from Baalbek: "This is an Israeli government and we want to make it fall...
...Equally ominous for Siniora would have been the sight of so many Lebanese Christians joining forces with Hizballah's Shi'ite base. Followers of Maronite Christian leader General Michel Aoun formed a colorful stream that flowed into the out of Christian East Beirut and into the crowd at the rally, dressed in their trademark orange. Aoun, who has presidential ambitions, formed an alliance with Hizballah that has split Lebanon's large Christian population, which has historically had strong ties to the U.S. and the West...