Al-Sadr Embarasses US

What's Wrong with this Picture?

The Bush administration negotiates this deal behind closed door, only publicly refers to its terms during the negotiation in "vague" ways, and tells the elected members of Congress it's not their affair and he doesn't need their approval to commit the United States to it.

Yet here is an Iraq Islamic cleric calling for a referendum on the agreement, public protests against it, a media drive opposing it and, if need be, a petition drive to give the people of Iraq a voice on the agreement.

How embarrassing for us in the United States. This Islamic theocrat is actually more democratic and transparent than George Bush. If Al Sadr has his way, the Iraqi people will have more say on the US occupation of Iraq than we will.

And we liberated them to be like us? LOL!!!

clipped from www.commondreams.org An agreement between the United States and Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain operating in Iraq past 2008 should be put to a popular referendum, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged in an online message to his followers. In the statement posted on a loyalist Web site, the popular cleric renewed his call for a timetable for the departure of U.S. troops and called for delegations to approach the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League and other Iraq neighbors to discuss the agreement. Protests against the agreement should be carried out after Friday prayers “until further notice or until the treaty is canceled,” al-Sadr said. If the government rejects his call for a referendum on the agreement, al-Sadr will order his offices “to work on collecting millions of signatures opposing” it, the message said. Some members of Congress have objected to the Bush administration’s plans to handle the agreement without seeking congressional approval.