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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (748815)	9/9/2006 7:19:43 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Shias use festival to call for regional autonomy (AFP) 9 September 2006 khaleejtimes.com KARBALA, Iraq - Pilgrims left the Shiite holy city of Karbala Saturday after the peaceful end of a major festival where their leaders reaffirmed controversial calls for an autonomous region like that of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Prominent Shiite leader Abdel Aziz Al Hakim used the celebration of the birth of the Mahdi, a 9th century Shiite imam, to renew his call for an autonomous Shiite region in central and southern Iraq—something the nation’s once dominant Sunni Arab minority fears. “Federalism will lead to stability and security in Iraq,” Hakim told worshippers during the main weekly prayers in Karbala on Friday. “Look at the example of federalism in Kurdistan, it is evidence of the success of this system.” Hakim leads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the most powerful parties in the ruling coalition. “We support it strongly because it would keep dictatorship from happening again—all are entitled to enjoy federalism,” he said. Sunni Arabs fear that they will lose out if the Shias are allowed broad autonomy in the oil-rich south and the Kurds are allowed to extend their existing autonomous region to incorporate the northern oilfields around Kirkuk. The issue is to be debated in parliament on Sunday with the first reading of a draft law presented by the main Shiite bloc. Sunnis have called for the debate to be delayed while they press their own demands for amendments to the constitution. Shiite politicians insist a fully federal system will not lead to Iraq breaking up, but rather take some of the heat out of a bitter sectarian conflict, which has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. The sensitivity of the issue was underlined by the government’s decision Thursday to ban the Arab satellite news channel Al Arabiya for one month, in part due to its coverage of the debate. In Karbala, south of the capital, officials oversaw the departure of the tens of thousands of pilgrims, providing scores of trucks to transport them back to homes around the country, Governor Aqil Al Khazali said. He added that the heavy security measures that ensured a peaceful conclusion to the ceremony would remain in place for now. In contrast to the relative peace further south, Baghdad saw a string of bomb attacks on Saturday that claimed four lives, including two bystanders killed in an early morning attack on a US patrol in the center of the city. A car bomber also attempted to ram his vehicle into a police station in Waziriyah, killing one policemen and wounding dozens. A technician with the state-owned Sabah newspaper was shot dead on his way to work in the capital. Three US soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack in east Baghdad’s Jadida neighborhood. In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, twin blasts killed four people and wounded 16. The bombers detonated the second device as a police patrol arrived on the scene of the first blast, killing one officer and wounding two, said Lieutenant Colonel Akram Abdullah of Kirkuk police. In ousted president Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, one civilian was shot dead, police said. South of Baghdad, authorities discovered the bodies of five people who had been shot dead, four of them in the town of Suwayrah, which has become a common dumping ground for victims of sectarian killings.

To: PROLIFE who wrote (748815)	9/9/2006 9:37:29 AM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The parallel is the Cold War, when the left spent its entire time demanding that the evil Soviet empire be appeased at every turn. They lost that debate and the evil Soviet empire was destroyed by Ronald Reagan. Bush's main job was to engage the Islamofacist enemy and effectively keep it in its OWN streets rather than ours. His SECOND and equal duty was to engage the DOMESTIC enemy. In this he has had relatively good political results-which will probably carry over into 2006 and 2008. But he has failed to establish the long-term reality that our fight is with BOTH the traitors at home and the Islamofacists abroad. We may thus be subject to a succeeding Republican administration that weakly takes its marching orders from the anti-American media and bovine-eyed populists, and brings about American failure in the New Crusade...