Iraqi Leader Orders Halt to Wall in Baghdad

Is this what leadership looks like? Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki has ordered the wall being built by the U.S. military to be removed.

In my opinion this is exaclty the kind of thing I want to be seeing from the Iraqis. How could the American military not have foreseen this outcry? Are they that out of touch with the needs and wants of the Iraqis?

This is a prime example of the folly that the U.S. military is involved with in Iraq. Building barriers to seperate neighborhoods when the goal of the new operation is to build security so the sides could come CLOSER together.

I am not very confident in the ability of the United States bridge to a religious divide withing Iraq based on this most current example of bad decisions made by senior leadership of the Bush Administration.

Poor Sancho

following is a part of an article from the NYT. The whole halting of building the wall isnt quite as clear as I thought...





By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 22, 2007
BAGHDAD, April 22 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Sunday that he was ordering a halt to construction of a wall that would blockade a Sunni Arab neighborhood in Baghdad from other areas, saying it reminded people of “other walls.”

The announcement, which he made in Cairo while on a state visit, appeared intended to allay mounting criticism from both Sunni Arab and Shiite parties about the project. “I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop,” Mr. Maliki told reporters during a joint news conference with the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa.

“There are other methods to protect neighborhoods,” he said.

A spokesman for the American military, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, said the military would remain “in a dialogue” with the Iraqi government about how best to protect citizens. The military did not say whether the wall’s construction would be halted.

Mr. Maliki did not specify in his remarks what other walls he referred to, but the separation barrier in the West Bank being erected by Israel, which protects Israel but greatly inconveniences Palestinians, is a particularly sensitive issue among Arabs.

In Baghdad, the wall would surround the Adamiya neighborhood, a Sunni Arab enclave bordered by Shiite areas. The Sunni neighborhood often comes under mortar attack from those neighborhoods. But Adamiya has also been a stronghold of militant Sunni Arab groups and the wall would have helped the Iraqi security forces control their movements.