TIGHT ROPE

Hi,

Happy New Year greetings to all my friends and readers.

I have not been able to post recently due to pressure of daily life. We are facing a major onslaught by the enemy. The U.S. presence in Iraq is trying a very treacherous ropewalk at the moment. The situation is fraught with danger. The U.S. authorities are being too anxious to ingratiate themselves to the various Sunni groups in a way that I think is going too far. I hope to find the time to say something more detailed about this. They are not going to win over the terrorists, but they run a serious risk of loosing their fundamental base of support in the country. It is of course, required and necessary to strike a balance and find a way to draw the Sunnis into the political process, but it must be done within clear boundaries and without giving any ground to the terrorists. And if there are any criticisms or misgivings about the conduct of the Interior Ministry or the Defense Ministry, they can be made known to those concerned through discreet and private channels and not by public statements and in the media. Al Zawahiri, Bin Ladens’ spokesman, has lost no time in proclaiming victory and stating with malice that the Americans are "begging" to engage the "Mujahideen" in dialogue. Serious correction of American policy is required urgently, otherwise this may prove the biggest error yet, and already the emboldening of the terrorists is noticeable, which I think is largely encouraged by the shift and indecisiveness of the American position.

The daily genocide cannot continue without reaction by the majority. Neither the MNF nor the Iraqi Government can afford to standby and watch this without action. This is the answer by the enemy to the development of the political process. He is launching an all out attack against the basic infrastructure and the daily life of the people in its most mundane details. The people are boiling and a general conflagration is just around the corner. A situation might develop which will completely wreck all the gains that have been achieved, and render the situation quite untenable.

I am sorry to sound so negative, but I just don’t have the time to be more diplomatic and this is a brief message of warning, which I am hoping might reach the people from this humble forum.

Salaam, and wishing that the New Year might be a little less disastrous than the previous one.

Regards