While Amer­i­cans con­tinue their bor­ing dis­cus­sions about the so called surge, their media keeps report­ing old, out­dated news, cre­at­ing an illu­sion called Maliki’s “suc­cess”, which indi­rectly means Bush “success”.

Kirkuk: Regional interference

As I explained before that what hap­pened in the provin­cial law vot­ing is a seri­ous crack, Al Hayat arti­cle “Kirkuk: The straw that broke the camel’s back” agreed with me call­ing it “a new turn in the polit­i­cal life” reveals few secrets of the provin­cial law voting:

The United Iraqi Alliance changed it’s posi­tion one day before the vot­ing after they met with the Kur­dish Alliance to vote against the law.

One the regional level:

Iran instructed its allies in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment not to meet the Kurds demands in Kirkuk. Accord­ing to the source Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan took a promise from Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nuri al-Maliki not to allow the Kurds to seize Kirkuk into their Kur­dish territory.

Hawza’s total collapse

Sistani’s top rep­re­sen­ta­tive Abdul-Mahdi Al-Krbala’I in his Fri­day ser­mon showed the total col­lapse of the Hawza and loss of con­fi­dence saying:

A lot of cit­i­zens do not wish to par­tic­i­pate in the provin­cial elec­tions, argu­ing that the for­mer elec­tion has not ben­e­fited them anything.