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| Iraq |
| Iraq to reinstate officers from Saddams army |
| 2010-02-26 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] More than 20,000 army officers who served under deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein are to be reinstated, a defense ministry spokesman said on Thursday, as Iraq's Sunni block decided to end elections boycott. "Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki gave his consent to reinstate 20,400 officers" who had made a request, Mohammad al-Askari said. They did such a good job fighting us off the army really feels like it needs them... The United States dissolved Saddam's 450,000-strong army shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Iraq's leading Sunni Arab political bloc meanwhile announced that it will take part in next month's general election and urged its followers to turn out in numbers. The about-face by the National Dialogue Front (NDF) comes just five days after it said it was withdrawing from the vote, only the second parliamentary poll since the invasion. "We call on the Iraqi people to vote massively to avoid fraud, despite our reservations concerning the electoral process," Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni MP who has been barred from standing for re-election on the grounds of alleged links to the Baath party of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein, told AFP. Mutlak, who was among 456 candidates who were barred, highlighted "the exclusion of candidates, which is hurting the legitimacy of the election." On Saturday, the NDF said that its 175 candidates would no longer stand in protest at what it said was Iranian interference in the poll. However, electoral authorities told AFP the boycott was largely symbolic and had no official status because the deadline for parties to withdraw had passed and ballot papers had already been printed. Mutlak was the main Sunni figure in Shiite former premier Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqiya list. His disqualification is a setback for Allawi's bid to unseat Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and hopes for reconciliation. "We are concerned that the situation will deteriorate in the event that Iraqiya does not win, and we are sure that Iraqiya will not win if we do not participate," Mutlak said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 These birds are fish out of water. They are "old school" and have none of the years of training and military schooling for the rest of the Iraqi officers corps. As such, they can't be given command, and can't be given responsibility over anything that demands expertise, or anything they might steal. So the best bet would be to put them all on Iranian border patrol, with instructions to count every sand flea they encounter. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-02-26 10:16 |