As noted in Friday's "Iraq snapshot," protests took place throughout Iraq and Nouri worked really hard to keep journalists from covering the protests by using his military to prevent them from entering towns. While Prashant Rao (AFP), Liz Sly (Washington Post) and the BBC News worked hard to get that news out, others were fine yet again ignoring what's taking place in Iraq.
So much that goes on in Iraq get ignored. For example, the prison scandal, about women being tortured and raped in Iraqi prisons. Or Nouri's efforts to strip Members of Parliament of the immunity the Constitution awards them. Or Nouri's targeting of the Minister of Finance -- as usual when Nouri targets a politician, the politician is a member of Iraqiya, the political slate that came in first in the 2010 elections (beating Nouri's State of Law).
When that happened, US President Barack Obama had to piss on democracy, piss on Iraqi voters and piss on the Iraqi Constitution to keep his fellow Nouri al-Maliki on as prime minister. To grant Nouri a second term after his second place showing, the White House created a contract (The Erbil Agreement). It followed 8 months of Nouri refusing to step down as prime minister. The contract got the leaders of the various political blocs to sign on by offering them things. For example, the Constitution demands that Article 140 be implemented but it never was in Nouri's first term. The Kurds wanted Nouri to obey the Constitution. In the contract, they allow him to have a second term as prime minister in exchange for his promise that he will implement Article 140.
And then he used The Erbil Agreement to grab that second term and then he trashed it, refusing to honor his part of the deal.
The Kurds waited for the White House to step up (as they'd promised they would). But the White House never made an issue out of the contract they brokered now being broken.
Is it any wonder that David Romano (Rudaw) observed last week:
Average
Iraqis increasingly lose faith with their government as the shell game
continues. As Nuri al-Maliki increasingly rides rough shod over the
Constitution and the law of the land, the American State Department
seems to forgive him all his transgressions. Instead of demanding a
better showing from Maliki, they pressure the Kurds, the Sunnis and
non-Dawaa Party Shiites to make nice with Maliki.
As Elaine pointed out Friday:
Nouri is a threat and danger to the Iraqi people.
They voted for change and Barack went around their votes, the democracy, the Constitution to devise a contract (Erbil Agreement) to give Nouri a second term.
Again, gays are targeted, Sunnis are targeted, Nouri refused to even have one woman in his Cabinet until there was international outcry -- and this is who the US government backs.
Remember that the next time Barack wants to pretend to give a damn about human rights.
At Friday's protests, Iraqis chanted, "The people want to bring down the regime." Ken Hanly (Digital Journal) observed, "This is the slogan protesters used in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere during the Arab Spring." May it have similar results in Iraq.
--------------
Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "I See Ba'athists" from December 25, 2011.