SENATOR Warner, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee concluded, after his recent visit to Iraq, that the US game was almost up in that country.
On his return to the US, he took the ground from beneath the feet of the US President, George Bush, by saying that the US should give the current puppet Prime Minister, Maliki two or three months to change the security situation. If he failed, the US must draw the requisite conclusions.
Other American political figures took his argument further when they suggested that the US had to either draw up a timetable for the withdrawal of all US forces or else keep bases in northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) and allow the country to be dissected into three rival statelets.
Among those who have spoken up on the issue of partitioning Iraq is the former US Secretary of State James Baker.
The withdrawal and partition argument has been strengthened by the fact that the US-Iraqi puppet attempt to try to pacify Baghdad has resulted in 30 US soldiers killed in a week.
This pacification drive has also seen the US army and puppet forces combating the Mahdi army, inspired by Moqtada al-Sadr, in the central Iraqi city of Al Diwaniyah.
The spokesman of Al-Sadr in Baghdad, Abd-al-Hadi al-Darraji, has spoken up against this attack and also against the plot to partition and destroy Iraq.
He commented: ‘All parts of Iraq are ablaze because of the presence of US troops. Therefore, I ask the brothers in the Imam Al-Mahdi Army and all those connected to the Al-Sadr Trend to ease their stands because the US troops want sectarian strife, especially when we hear the ill-boding statements by the US ambassador in which he threatens and warns the Iraqis of a sectarian war.’
He added: ‘all nationalist and religious forces and the resistance, if it can be called as such, should be united to expel the occupiers from Iraq’.
That this is the way forward, and is posed point blank by the sectarian strife and the threat of partition that Iraq has been plunged into by the occupation, is obvious.
Even pro-US forces in Saudi Arabia, the number one strategic allies of the US in the region, are aware that the end is fast coming for the US adventure in Iraq.
The Al Watan Saudi newspaper has described the recent visit of the US Secretary of State, Rice to Iraq in the following terms.
‘In a press conference aboard her plane, Rice held the Iraqis responsible for the deteriorated situation in their country and said that she will tell Iraqi political leaders that they have limited time to settle their political rifts, because the “security situation is not one that can be tolerated”.’
Further: ‘Rice, who was flanked by an armed unit of bodyguards and who was wearing a helmet and a bullet-proof vest, failed to give one example of the progress that is taking place in Iraq, or to guide Iraqi politicians to a useful way to swiftly settle their political differences, especially since the Americans have had lengthy experience in devising solutions for such disputes, which have existed for more than three years.
‘This lengthy experience has made the security and political situation in Iraq so bad that the Iraqis are now longing for the old days under Saddam Hussein.’
It continued to mock Rice: ‘Rice came to Iraq to bring the good tidings to the Iraqis – who are writing their wills each and every morning – that they are “making progress”.’
Saudi Arabia is the major strategic ally of the United States in the region. It has given up any hope that it had in the US mission in Iraq.
Likewise, it is not over keen on the latest US idea that Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia should form an axis dedicated to fighting Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas on behalf of the United States.
The time is now ripe for all of the revolutionary anti- imperialist forces in Iraq to unite in common action to drive out the US-UK occupation armies and reconstitute Iraq through a socialist revolution.
