Some Sunni Muslims won't salute Iraq's new flag

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Officials in Iraq's mostly Sunni Muslim Anbar province are refusing to raise Iraq's new national flag, which the parliament approved earlier this week.

"The new flag is done for a foreign agenda and we won't raise it," said Ali Hatem al Suleiman, a leading member of the U.S.-backed Anbar Awakening Council, "If they want to force us to raise it, we will leave the yard for them to fight al Qaida."

...

The dispute over the flag is a more accurate symbol of Iraq today than the flag itself is. "On nothing we are completely united," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker.

Although parliament speaker Mahmoud al Mashhadani said the new flag would be raised immediately across Iraq after the parliament approved it Tuesday, it's nowhere to be seen. In fact, when the parliament met Wednesday, the old flag was still behind the speaker and his two deputies.

...

Only 165 of the Iraqi parliament's 275 lawmakers were present Tuesday, and only 110 voted for the new red, white and black flag with "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") in Kufic script, the ancient calligraphy developed in Mesopotamia.



Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/25471.html

that was supposed to be the new Iraqi flag?

This one could be worse...

A slim minority of parliamentarians approved the new flag, which doesn't have Saddam Hussein's handwriting or the three stars that represented his Sunni-dominated Baath Party.

It was rushed through parliament before a pan-Arab parliament meeting that's planned for March in Irbil, in the Kurdish north, because the Kurdish Regional Government prohibits flying Iraq's Saddam-era flag. The Kurds consider that flag a symbol of Saddam's oppression.

Only 165 of the Iraqi parliament's 275 lawmakers were present Tuesday, and only 110 voted for the new red, white and black flag with "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") in Kufic script, the ancient calligraphy developed in Mesopotamia....Many Iraqis, including some lawmakers who rejected the flag, were angered at what they considered a change to the flag in order to please the Kurdish north and its president, Massoud Barzani.

"We don't want to handle the problem of the Kurdistan region by causing problems with other regions that might refuse the new flag," said Nassar al Rubaie, the head of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr's bloc in parliament, who voted against the new flag.

The new flag is temporary. According to Iraq's Constitution, the parliament must pass a new law that issues a permanent flag and a national anthem.

The Iraqi flag has long been a point of contention. When a flag with light blue stripes and a blue crescent moon in the middle was proposed in 2004, many Iraqis thought that it resembled the Israeli flag and people took to the streets in protest.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I would hope not, being that he is not active or retired military.

Are not the only people that salute the American Flag in this country. Putting a person's right hand across one's heart during the Pledge of Allegiance or the playing the National Anthem is a form of salute to the flag. I do understand that there are some of my countrymen that prefer not to salute the flag.

In my 20 years in Virginia, I have never seen a Southerner not salute the flag when the occasion called for it.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

By they way, shouldn't the Iraqis have had a chance to vote on their flag should look like?

:eyes:
rocknation

Saddam is gone,Time to move on

Iraq Parliament Purges Hussein Vestiges on Flag
BAGHDAD —Iraqi lawmakers adopted a modified version of the national flag on Tuesday, removing three stars that symbolized the Baathist ideals of unity, freedom, and socialism, and Saddam Hussein’s handwritten calligraphy of the Koranic incantation “Allah u Akbar.”

The incantation, which means God is great, will remain on the flag, though it will now be written in the Kufic calligraphic style of ancient Mesopotamia.

Parliament members voted 110-50 for the flag, which was introduced in 2004 and bears the red, white and black stripes of Iraq’s original banner. The design preserves a sense of continuous national identity, while purging the flag of Baathist allusions, supporters say.

Kurdish politicians, many of whom survived the genocidal gas bombings of Mr. Hussein’s Anfal, or spoils of war, campaign of the 1980’s, were among the fiercest critics of the old flag. In 2006, Massoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, refused to fly the flag from government offices, prompting fear of Kurdish separatism.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html?_r=3&ex=1358744400&en=8ed4bbcc2d181f1b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Saddam is gone,
deal with it

I don't get it.

just isn't going to go over there, that's why.

just don't insult them

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Some 9,000 members of anti-Qaeda "Awakening" fronts in Iraq have been screened and lined up for training as regular police or soldiers, the US military said on Sunday. The number represents more than half the 16,000 or so Awakening members, many of whom are former Sunni Arab insurgents.They have applied to join the regular Iraqi security forces after having been recruited by the US military to fight Al-Qaeda in their own backyard.Military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference in Baghdad that the rest were still waiting to undergo screening and for openings in police colleges and military academies."Around 9,000 members of the Awakening have been entered into a process in which they are in a queue to begin their training programmes," Smith said.

In western Anbar province, where tribal leaders in September 2006 launched the first Awakening group, effectively putting Al-Qaeda to flight, another "10,000 to 20,000 ... have already gone through a training programme and are serving as police officers or members of the army."

US troops have for the past year been working closely with former insurgents they call CLCs or Concerned Local Citizens, who are paid 300 dollars a month to patrol neighbourhoods and man checkpoints.
Their numbers have swelled to some 80,000 members of a total of 130 CLC groups countrywide, according to latest figures from the US military.

Of these, 80 percent are Sunni and 20 percent Shiite. In some neighbourhoods the groups are mixed.


snip


http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5immTQrcpQmNrbtUNXn97yxmtErYQ
$300 a month?
thats better then a Sunni republican guard general made when he was on active duty under Saddam.

* gave them a new flag.