October 17, 2007
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
"Any attempt on the part of the U.S. to identify 'major factions' would be a top-down, externally imposed solution on a matter in which the Iraqis themselves have already designed bottom-up mechanisms."On September 26, 2007 the United States Senate voted 75–23 in favor of an amendment to the defense spending bill for 2008 that authorizes the U.S. government to “encourage” Iraqis to find a “federal” solution to the internal conflicts in their country. …
This means a giant departure from the Iraqi constitution, which assigns the right to form a federal region to the individual inhabitants of the existing governorates… Instead, the Biden amendment introduced the idea of a U.S. identification of “major factions”, which is something different altogether. Who are these factions? Access the full article>>