08/11/14 – Eric Garris – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And yeah, coming up, Marjorie Cohn and Jeff K.
We're going to talk about some stuff.
Right now, though, we got Eric Gares, he's the managing whatever, director, boss guy that runs antiwar.com.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Eric?
Fine.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
So first of all, let's talk about Iraqi politics for a minute here.
There's rumors of coups and counter coups and military responses, and all kinds of crisis.
Nouri al-Maliki does not want to step down.
And so please break it down for us.
Who's doing what in the Iraqi parliament today?
Well, as most of your listeners probably know, there's been a political battle over the last several months to pick a new prime minister after the last election.
Maliki wants a third term, and a lot of people oppose that.
He's been unable to get a majority of the parliament to agree to choose him.
So they keep adjourning and then trying to figure something out and then reconvening and failing again.
So yesterday, the parliament met again, and after several hours, they were unable to choose a new prime minister designate, so they agreed to adjourn for nine days.
At that point, Maliki demanded that the new president...
The president has always occurred in this new government.
The prime minister is always a Shia, and the speaker is always a Sunni.
So the only thing they have chosen is the new Sunni speaker and the new Kurdish president.
So the new president doesn't have that much power.
Mainly a prime minister has most of the power.
But the president could designate a new person to try and form a government, and they haven't done that yet.
Sort of like the president of Israel's position?
Yes, yes.
He doesn't really do anything other than say, now it's your turn to form a government, to try to.
Right.
It's primarily ceremonial.
There are a few other minor powers, but that's about it.
So Maliki demanded that since they had been unable to pick a designate by their deadline constitutionally, that the president was required to re-nominate Maliki and that he would try and form a government and be the caretaker leader, to continue to be a caretaker leader.
The new president, Mahmoud, he refused to do it, and Maliki said that was a violation of the constitution, he accused him of fomenting a coup, and he's now brought charges against him and he deployed tanks around the Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government facilities and also the U.S. embassy.
At that point, the U.S. finally said Maliki has to go, and they backed the new president's call to get rid of him.
Is that the order that it happened in?
He called out the tanks and then they endorsed the president's maneuver?
It happened almost simultaneously, it's hard to say which happened first, but I believe that that's the case.
I mean, it does certainly sound like they were behind it for them to get, you know, right on the endorsement when it wasn't even, you're saying?
I'm sure there's at least coordination between the anti-Maliki forces and the U.S. government, perhaps the CIA.
And I think Maliki...
The president didn't really do anything, but that's the problem, is he was supposed to go ahead and let Maliki try to form another government.
He didn't really mount a coup or anything, it was just the beginnings of what could have been one or something.
No, but Maliki fears, and I think rightly so, the CIA.
He's afraid that he's going to get the DM treatment.
Well, the fact that they spoke up, that the State Department came out and endorsed what was going on is pretty much proof that he's right about that.
Right.
Now, this morning, the Shiite National Alliance picked a new nominee for prime minister, al-Abadi.
Now, he's been in the running multiple times for prime minister, and he is a member of the Dawa Party, and he's a part of the State of Law Coalition, which is Maliki's ruling coalition.
But he was nominated by the other chief Shiite bloc, which is mainly made up of the Sadrist movement and the Supreme Islamic Council, which is pro-Iran.
So now, is the Dawa Party, do you know if the Dawa Party has actually been kind of folded into Maliki's State of Law, or he's actually broken off a couple of years ago and made his own government party separate from Dawa now?
It's still technically part of the State of Law Coalition, but not everyone in the Dawa Party is a Maliki supporter, even if they're still part of the ruling bloc at the moment.
So here's what all the mainstream media is reporting this morning, is that the Iraqi Shiites have chosen a new prime minister, and that the president has asked him to form a government.
The problem is that Parliament hasn't voted on this, and there are many members of the Dawa Party, including people who have been critical of Maliki, who said, no, we don't like this guy, we're not supporting him.
So it's unclear that Al-Abadi is going to have any more support than some of the other people that they've tried to put forward.
So at this point, nothing has really changed in terms of the deadlock in the Iraqi Parliament.
Well, and it sounds like the contest...
Until they reconvene, which is now scheduled for eight days from today, they could move that up, but until that happens, nothing is going to happen from a legal and constitutional perspective.
Now, what may happen, you know, extra-legally, you know, I think that there are a lot of possibilities with that.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, from drones to a bullet to the back of the head or whatever, rendition them off to Egypt, have them bear treatment.
By the way, Al-Abadi spent over two decades in England.
He spent over two decades in England during most of Saddam's rule.
So he's a very Western-oriented guy.
And that's the Kurd who's the president now?
No, no, this is Al-Abadi.
He is the new Haitian designate for prime minister.
Or the national, I should say, the National Alliance designate.
Now, the National Alliance, keep in mind, is still the second largest bloc in Parliament.
And that's the Supreme Islamic Council.
And the Saudi Arabian Alliance.
Exactly.
Right.
And now, so what's important, I'm sorry, I should have mentioned this for people listening here that the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawah Party in their, not entirely, but almost entirely, spent the time from Saddam's invasion of Iran in 1980 all the way through Bush Jr.'s invasion of Iraq in 2003 in Iran.
They were the Iraqi traitors who took Iran's side in the Iran-Iraq war.
And then America fought for them to put them in power all this time.
So really what we're talking about here is still just a choice of one, two, or three of the Iranian parties.
But I guess you're saying, this guy, he's part of their network, but he's much closer to the West than the Iranians, it sounds like.
Yes, but indications are he has the backing of Iran.
Iran said last week that they were working on trying to find someone who is acceptable to them to replace Maliki.
And the fact that the National Alliance has put forward al-Abadi would indicate to me that Iran is supporting al-Abadi at this point.
And so is the U.S.
Well, and this is all deckchairs on the Titanic anyway, at least according to the official policy.
None of this is going to change anything in terms of what's happening in Iraq unless there's a coup or counter-coup.
And that will have a significant effect of reverberation throughout Iraq that's going to make the other things that are going on much worse.
And I think that that's not, certainly, I'm not saying it's absolutely the most likely thing that will happen, but I think it is a likely possibility that you'll see Maliki ousted in an extra-legal manner, or that there will be an attempt to do that and Maliki will counter and just take dictatorial powers.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like if he's not taking the hint from Sistani, then he's willing to fight for it no matter what.
Yes, clearly he's not leaving.
He's not interested in taking his riches and being jetted off to a foreign country where he can live out his life in luxury.
He wants to keep the power.
All right, well, I'm going to let you go, but thank you very much for your time.
All right.
Thank you, Scott.
That's Eric Garris.
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