IRAQ COUP PLOT: Top Officials Arrested For Trying To Resurrect Saddam's Baath Party

BAGHDAD -- Up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been arrested over the past three days with some of them accused of quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, according to senior security officials in Baghdad.

The arrests, confirmed by officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security as well as the prime minister's office, included four generals, one of whom, Gen. Ahmed Abu Raqeef, is the ministry's director of internal affairs. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Palemoon]

Wow, a group of people get together to reform an apparently banned political party, and it's called a COUP?? What are these people smoking?? Another C-5 fly in with Afghan's best again??

[Nicolaus]

But whatever happens to the Democracy that President Bush planted there?

[Ramirez]

It appears to have survived a coup attempt.

[steamboat]

WELL SAID !

[Balzac]

That's bullsh!t. Maybe it was a political purge of those who were sympathetic to the shoe-thrower. Maybe it was a purge of those disloyal to Maliki. Maybe it was for some other reason.

Maliki is a puppet and he will lose power soon.

[WasteNJ]

Well if he's rounding up opposition in advance of the election, who knows. He did the same thing last time there was an election, cracking down on Al-Sadr just before the election to suppress turnout in Basra and elsewhere. Maliki's not stupid, but he must owe Iran some favors and some of this might be getting rid of anti-Iranian Sunnis inside his government.

[steamboat]

They stopped a coup by some old Saddam people. I see nothing wrong with that. And what fledgling democracy doesn't go through problems like this? BTW, the American democracy waited approximately 132 years before they let women vote. And a Voting Rights Act for ALL Americans wasn't passed until 1964. So who are we to judge the speed of Iraq's democracy?

[jhink465]

It appears that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So in the end, tens of thousands of dead and wounded, billions of dollars squandered and Iraq is where it was with Saddam, an authoritarian regime. Only this time the regime is aligned with Iran with all that can come from that.

[haval2]

Free society and democracy at work...heck of a job Georgie!

[GeorgeP922]

Thanks Bush, for making Iraq a "free society".

[WasteNJ]

Death squads are going after the death squads.
"Can I see that watch, sir?"

[FZliveson]

The quote says, in part: "...several officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security said that some of those arrested were in the early stages of planning a coup."
If establishing a political party is illegal, then so much for the Themocracy we helped them set up.
Early stages could have been sipping a Dr. Pepper together and reciting words from parts of their holy scriptures. Power hates competition.

[WasteNJ]

SO it looks like the long standing rivalry between the Military/Police and the Interior Ministry is finally reaching the tipping point. Everybody knows Interior Ministry Commandos were carrying out score-settling raids and disappearing people left and right, independent of the rest of the government. Looks like an Iran-leaning power consolidation. Damn those pesky opposition parties!

[Mogamboguru]

New main:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/18/clinton-foundation-donor_n_152046.html

[Fatality]

*Ignores the c@tty comments*

Enough! Let's just quit drinking the Kool Aid and get down to business....not the time for promises, it is the time for action, no need for wishful thinking.... 8)

[k6007]

Dittoheads have no concept of original thought...All you'll hear them repeat, mindlessly, is "sad dam waz a dit ater wo k///ed es own people!"
Just like, sheyawnH, (and all the rest cnn,msnbc,etc.) tells them to.
What if we actually TAUGHT something in the fourth estate?

[k6007]

This reply to: Somehumanscanreason-

[totaldisbelief]

and why would these guys do this now? with the US troops just down the road? And haven't they been doing their mischief all over Iraq for some time already?
What ..they are going to crash in and declared themselves the New Big Cheeses?
Maybe this is just a garden variety Purge.

[cactusgal]

I'm betting that within a few months Tom Cruise will make a movie of this "attempted coup." He can cast himself as a one-eyed general who can't decide whether he's Shiite or Sunni. Harrison Ford can play the shoe-flinging reporter who gets the bejeebus beat out of him, but ends up the hero and is reunited with his family.

The End.

[kellygrrrl]

perhaps WE best worry about the coup that went down in Our Country

[totaldisbelief]

Oh Kelly Po-leez explain yourself. I'm snowed in and badly need to be entertained today.
Don't just tease me and go away.

[Kalima]

Send some of that snow over here please, it must be 20 odd years, since we had
a white Christmas in Tokyo. I envy you but not so much.

[Ramirez]

That's your job, not ours.

[steamboat]

kelly, still defending John Edwards?

[abby4ever]

Argghhh. It lies below, stirring from sleep, the thing from the bottomless pit.

[peacekitten]

the golgothan sh*t demon? it's up early, isn't it?

[MIMom]

It likes you, Abby. :-)

[Fatality]

No way, i detest that particular entity... *yuck*

[RobertaInCT]

Remember, if you play with a puppy, he'll lick your hand............BTW good one!

:)

[abby4ever]

Point taken, but this ain't no puppy; it's some kind of medical or scientific experiment gone horribly wrong...

:]