Doug Lorimer

“People like this president. They’re just sour right now on the [Iraq] war.” This was the assessment made by Karl Rove, US President George Bush’s top political adviser, of an opinion poll showing that Bush’s approval rating had fallen to 29%, the lowest since he became president in January 2001. “I think the war looms over everything. There's no doubt about it”, Rove told a May 15 meeting of the American Enterprise Institute.

A Wall Street Journal/Harris poll released on May 13 found 71% of US adults rated Bush’s job performance negatively and that the Iraq war, in which the US has suffered more than 20,000 casualties (2445 killed and at least 17,869 wounded by May 14), was the most important issue influencing this judgement.

The poll found that Bush’s approval rating had fallen by 7 percentage points in one month, and was only five points above Richard Nixon’s before he was forced to resign in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

The rapid fall in Bush’s approval rate came despite the White House hailing as a “turning point” in the war the nomination on April 21 by the United Iraqi Alliance of a prime minister four months after general elections were held. The UIA is the coalition of Shiite religious parties that controls the largest bloc of seats — accounting for 41% of the votes — in the 275-member Iraqi parliament.

On May 15, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he would not support the formation of a new cabinet without the appointment of an interior (police) minister. Prime minister-designate Nuri al Maliki, who is a member of the UIA-affiliated Dawa party, has until May 21 to come up with a cabinet acceptable to Talabani. If Maliki is unable to do so, he will have to resign.

Knight Ridder Newspapers reported on May 10 that the UIA-affiliated Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has 32 seats in the parliament, “is still pushing for the reappointment of the current [interior] minister, Bayan Jabr ... Jabr is closely affiliated with the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia, and has been accused of allowing Shiite death squads to infiltrate elite police commando and intelligence department units.”

On May 10, Baghdad’s city morgues reported that 1091 people had been died in execution-style killings in April. United Press International reported that “many of the discovered corpses ... were taken from their homes or mosques by Iraqi security forces, or at least squads dressed in police or military fatigues”.

From Green Left Weekly, May 24, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

Tools

• Bookmark This Page
• Print This Page