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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Sunni Party Leaves Iraqi Government Over Falluja Attack
(Edward Wong, The New York Times, November 10, 2004)
In the first major political backlash over the assault on Falluja, the country's most prominent Sunni political party said Tuesday that it was withdrawing from the interim Iraqi government, while the leading group of Sunni clerics called for Iraqis to boycott the nationwide elections scheduled for early next year. . . . The moves seemed to promise that popular protest against the American-led attack on the city, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim, is likely to grow in coming days. . . . A widespread Sunni boycott of the January elections, if one comes to pass, would threaten the legitimacy of the outcome. It would also undermine the main rationale for the attack on Falluja: to drive insurgents out of the city so residents could freely take part in the elections. . . . "The clerics call on honorable Iraqis to boycott the upcoming election that is to be held over the bodies of the dead and the blood of the wounded in cities like Falluja," said Harith al-Dhari, director of the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques. . . . Just as ominous was the withdrawal of the Iraqi Islamic Party from the interim government. The party was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council set up by the Americans during the occupation and has been held up by American and Iraqi officials as a model of Sunni participation in the political future of the country. In recent weeks, its leader, Mohsen Abdul Hameed, had been saying he intended to take part in the elections. . . . "After the attack on Falluja, we decided to withdraw from the government because our presence in the government will be judged by history," Mr. Abdul Hameed, an interim National Assembly member, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. . . . The move so alarmed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi that he met privately with Mr. Abdul Hameed hours later. But the party stuck to its position, and an aide said in the afternoon that it was not clear that the group would take part in the elections. . . . Mr. Abdul Hameed's move "raises the question of whether a mass Sunni Arab boycott of the elections is in the offing, thus fatally weakening the legitimacy of any new government." . . . Adding to the growing tension, Moktada al-Sadr, the popular Shiite Muslim cleric who has led two uprisings against the Americans, said through a spokesman that the attack on Falluja "is an attack on all the Iraqi people," and that Iraqis must not help the American forces.

posted by Lorenzo 7:51 PM