US Mission In Iraq 'Haram' After 2011

Grand Ayatollah to US troops: Here’s your turban, what’s your hurry?

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One of the strangest (unique?) national spectacles ever is that of the US apparently begging Iraq ro allow US troops to remain in Iraq after the 2011 deadline for withdrawal.

As I’ve written before, this seems to be a naked ploy by the Obama re-election campaign to prevent the country from unraveling completely during the 2012 campaign, strenuously assisted by Iraq hawks of the neocon persuasion to prevent the country from unraveling completely ever — even if that means we have to stay there in perpetuity. But this epic CYA is not going over well with local “religious authorities” according to a kind of poll of Sunni and Shiite leaders reportedly conducted by Moqtada al Sadr.

Additionally, according to Iran’s Fars News Agency, there’s also a fatwa against US troops — I mean, “infidel occupiers” — remaining past the 2011 deadline.

Senior Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Kazzem al-Hosseini al-Haeri condemned the attempts made by Washington to prolong its military deployment in Iraq, and issued a Fatwa (religious decree) against the presence of the US forces in the country after the end of 2011.

“The extended mission of the infidel occupiers in Iraq even for one single day after the mentioned date (as cited in the security agreement) is haram (religiously forbidden),” the Grand Ayatollah declared in his decree.

Whatever it takes.