VICTORY AND DEFEAT WITH MALIKI

The Iraqi council of representatives met last Tuesday after the 5 bombings in Baghdad which claimed the Lives of over 120 people and left over 500 wounded, to discus what went wrong and how such thing could happen.

Most of the parliamentarians were very critical of the security forces. Most of them demanded to summon the security ministers and the prime minister, since he is the commander in chief of the armed forces, to the parliament and hold them accountable. The parliamentarians were so fired up and passionate about that issue especially the general election is only 3 months away. So they all agreed to bring the Minister of interior, Defense and Prime Minister Al-Maliki on Thursday Dec 10^th.

On Thursday PM Maliki came to the Parliament, where he was welcomed by the deputy speaker (Khalid Al-Attiya) at the entrance to the parliament and then they headed to the office of the deputy speaker were they stayed for half an hour. Then Maliki headed to the parliament.

The parliament voted at the beginning on making the session closed and secret. Maliki said that it would be OK if the session is Open but he would be freer to talk about security issues in details when it is closed.

The first news that came out of that closed session was that the Prime minister agreed with the presidency that Thursday session would be for him by himself and the Parliament could meet with the security ministers later. Maliki made a preemptive step before coming to the parliament on Wednesday by replacing the commander of Baghdad security plan (staff General Aboud Qanbar) with the deputy chief of Staff.

Maliki started talking about the achievements in the fields of security in Baghdad that his government has made. Something that he has been talking about a lot lately. He said that there are 2 stages in security" lost security" and "infiltrated security". .

The lost security was when entire neighborhoods in Baghdad were under the control of the armed factions and not the state. While now, his Government, and thanks to Baghdad security command, which reports to him directly, the control has been regained over those neighborhoods.

The infiltrated security is what happened on the bombings in August, October and Finally on December 8^th. Maliki said that every one is responsible. The Government, the council of representatives all the state offices and "even the citizens" are responsible according to Samira Al-Mossawi, a shiat Parliament member, who gave reporters a briefing on what was going inside the Parliament session..

" Mr. prime minister through the Ball at the Parliament field saying that you should issue legislations that facilitate the work of the security forces " said Eman Al-Asadi , a another shiat parliamentarian.

In another word, Maliki is crediting the successes that took place in the field of security to him and ho his national Unity government and not even crediting the US military surge, while the responsibility of the 100+ casualties bombings are the responsibility of every one.

" Mr prime Minister is the direct executive supervisor on all the security departments in Iraq , . he defended him self by saying that this is the work of the specialized ministries and his office only supervises the plans of these ministries and coordinate between them" Said Mohammed Salman a sonni parliamentarian

" he put the blame on the Iraqi Ministries and hold them directly responsible, while he did not bear the responsibility" Salman added.

Mr. Maliki just twisted the saying "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan" and making it "victory is all mine, but defeat is everybody's responsibility" .