IRAQI deputies to the puppet parliament, who are Iraqi nationalists and who support Moqtada al-Sadr have denounced the US puppet government of Premier Maliki, describing it as ‘depraved’.
The fact that the US puppet Maliki recently personally led a US sponsored military assault on Basra to try to crush the nationalist insurgents there, and then after he was beaten back turned on the two million inhabitants of Sadr City in Baghdad, is ‘depraved’ indeed.
The US and Iraqi puppet forces have slaughtered 1,000 civilian residents of Sadr City in three weeks of heavy fighting with the nationalist Mahdi Army. As many as 10,000 civilians have been wounded by the fighting.
The US-puppet onslaught is a ruthless and desperate one, with tank and artillery barrages and air strikes being used to try and clear the way for a ground assault.
This desperate assault gives the lie to the US propaganda that their surge had changed and pacified Iraq. In fact, US figures state that 49 US soldiers died in Iraq in April, the highest monthly toll since September last year.
The fighting in Sadr City represents a desperate attempt by US imperialism to maintain not only its occupation of Iraq, but to keep its puppet government in power.
To achieve this it is willing to slaughter tens of thousands of the residents of Sadr City!
Three Sadrist deputies called a news conference in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in Baghdad on Thursday, at which they denounced Maliki and his government.
They held up pictures of dead Iraqi civilians they said were killed by government forces, backed by US troops, in Sadr City.
This is a time for the whole Iraqi insurgency to unite to support the besieged residents of Sadr City, with a major drive to evict all of the occupying armies from Iraq and to put an end to the puppet government.
One of the ‘peculiarities’ of the situation is that the Maliki government which is spearheading the drive to slaughter the residents of Sadr City, not only has the full support of the US government, it has the full support of the Iranian government.
The Iranian government should understand that all that it is going to get from taking steps to help the US in Iraq is some very hard knocks in the not so distant future.
This has been made more than clear by the hysterical intervention of one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton.
When asked how would she respond if Iran were to attack Israel, Clinton, instead of attempting to calm the situation down, made it crystal clear that her policy in relation to Iran is not a jot different to that of the current US president, to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.
She said: ‘If I’m the president, we will attack Iran. . . we would be able to totally obliterate them.’
She added: ‘That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.’
Iran must therefore drop its support for the US puppet Maliki, and end all of the discussions with the US to try and reach some deal on the basis that it will help the US out in Iraq.
For the insurgency, the onslaught on Sadr City is no different from the onslaught on Fallujah that was carried out under Premier Allawi using thousands of US troops and gas and chemical weapons.
The insurgency must give its full support to the residents of sadr City and the Al-sadr movement which are under attack.
They must establish a joint command to lead the push to end the occupation and end the Maliki government, and pledge that with Iraq free from imperialism and its agents, there will be a constituent assembly elected to decide on a workers’ and farmers’ government for Iraq.