Observer Journal Copyright 2009

According to iCasualties:

Two killed in ALL Iraq by the enemy in January, 2010.

http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/Fatalities.aspx

In December 2009, the Iraq war is won.  Zero killed last month.  TWO THIS MONTH.

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According to Aswat al-Iraq:

In November 2009, Iraqi Civilian casualties hit lowest level since 2003 

December1, 2009 - 08:23:03

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Civilian deaths in Iraq have hit a six-year low in November 2009

http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=122799

The Iraq war has proven the far-Left to be racists.

The Iraqi Democrats are doing a great job.  Most on the far-Left still believe in January 2010 that the Iraqi Democrats and Iraq are an inherent disaster that simply must be abandoned so "those people" can have "their" civil war.

Even worse, many on the far-Left still believe that "average Iraqi Muslims" are "too stupid" to make democracy and participatory Islam work.

That's racism.

Meanwhile, the European far-Left falls silent and bitter over Iraq, having worked hard for a "Second Saigon" with U.S. helicopters on the embassy roof.  The American far-Left worked hard for millions of Iraqi Democrats to be slaughtered in the far-left's "second killing fields" in an effort to perfect "Iraq as a political message" and to achieve long-term Democrat political power back in America.

According to Informed Comment:

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Was US-Iran rivalry Driving the Exclusion of Candidates in Iraq?  Was Allawi the Target?

I am going to speculate a little today, but I am hoping it is informed speculation. I think an end-game drama is playing out in Iraq between the United States and Iran,and possibly among factions of Americans in Iraq, over the likely leader of the next Iraqi government. I am going to argue that the disqualification of 500candidates, some of them prominent Sunni Arabs, was not a sectarian measure,but a strategic strike at a single candidate. Update: The ban on the 500candidates has just been lifted.

Iraqi Vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni Arab and member of the three-man presidential council, visited Washington for consultations with President Barack Obama on Tuesday. In an interview with political scientist Marc Lynch, al-Hashimi was clearly upset about thedecision of the High Electoral Commission to exclude over 500 candidates, many of them Sunni Arabs, from running in the March 7 parliamentary elections because of their alleged connections to the banned Baath Party (the secular Arab nationalist party that had been taken over by Saddam Hussein in 1979). But he was apparently not sure how much US intervention he wanted in the crisis. The visit appears to have been extremely successful, insofar as back in Baghdad the ban was lifted on Wednesday.

I think the visit was to strategize with the US over how to counter the Shiite chess move, which was probably carried out in consultation with Iran, aimed at checkmating candidate for prime minister Ayad Allawi. Allawi is one of five or six plausible successors to current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, assuming al-Maliki cannot muster the seats to allow him a second term. They also include Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who broke off from the Da'wa Party, perpetual gadfly and Neoconservative favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, and a couple of others. Of them all, only Allawi is anti-Iran. Of them all, only Chalabi might try to recognize Israel, though many suspect him of being a double agent for Iran.

http://www.juancole.com/