Quotes of the Morning: In Deep Shiite

“Five Cabinet ministers loyal to Iraq's first post-Saddam Hussein leader will boycott government meetings, further deepening the political crisis that threatens to swamp the administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, two lawmakers said Monday.
The boycott of Iraqiya List ministers loyal to former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi leaves the government, at least temporarily, with no Sunni participants. It was a deep blow to al-Maliki's attempt to craft reconciliation among the country's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis and Kurds.
Iraqiya List lawmaker Iyad Jamal-Aldin said the Allawi bloc had suspended Cabinet participation because al-Maliki failed to respond to demands for political reform issued five months ago.”
-Associated Press, August 6, 2007

“Well that should simplify matters in Iraq. Most of the problems there seem to be due to a civil war raging between the Sunni and Shiite groups. If the government doesn’t have any Sunni members the government should run much smoother.
Look at Basra! It is a primarily Shiite area, and Britain has been able to accomplish wonderful things there..”
-Skippy

“Blair said today that Britain will cut its forces in Iraq to 5,500 by summer, down from 7,100 currently. And additional cuts to as few as 5,000 British troops in Iraq are possible by the end of summer, Blair said.
But in an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney said the move was actually good news and a sign of progress in Iraq.
‘Well, I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well,’ Cheney told ABC News' Jonathan Karl.
‘In fact, I talked to a friend just the other day who had driven to Baghdad down to Basra, seven hours, found the situation dramatically improved from a year or so ago, sort of validated the British view they had made progress in southern Iraq and that they can therefore reduce their force levels,’ Cheney said.”
-ABC News, February 21, 2007

“See? Progress! Dramatic improvement, just like the Big Dick said. Without Sunnis (you know.. ethnic cleansing) the Shiites will all live in peace and harmony.”
-Skippy

“As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.
Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by ‘the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors,’ a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.”
-Washington Post, August 7, 2007

“Shh.. Don’t talk about that. It will get in the way of all the progress. The British military has everything under control.”
-Skippy

"’The British have basically been defeated in the south,’ a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad. They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as ‘surrounded like cowboys and Indians’ by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.”
-Washington Post, August 7, 2007

“Um.. It isn’t the Shiite groups that are causing problems. They are living in peace and harmony.. Really. I mean it. No, the dangers that the British face come from another source.”
-Skippy

“The Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating humans.”
-Agence France-Presse, July 11, 2007

“The Brits could handle the Shiites or the Sunnis, but no one has ever come up with a defense against Monty Python.”
-Skippy