Iraqi VP predicts return to sectarian violence

From Mohammed Tawfeeq and Frederik Pleitgen, CNN

updated 3:41 PM EST, Mon January 30, 2012

Irbil, Iraq (CNN) -- Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi has lashed out at Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, predicting that Iraq could soon return to widespread sectarian violence that could require the return of U.S. forces.
"Al-Maliki is pushing my country to reach a turning point with deeply sectarian dimension," The Sunni vice president told CNN on Sunday during an interview in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, where he has fled so that government forces loyal to the Shiite prime minister cannot execute an arrest warrant for him on charges of running a death squad.
He expressed concern that Americans "will face the same problem as they faced in 2003," when a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein and unleashing a wave of sectarian violence.
And he said he did not understand how U.S. President Barack Obama is able to characterize Iraq as a free, stable and democratic country.
"What sort of Iraq are we talking about?" he asked. "How the Americans feel proud? How the American administration is going to justify to the taxpayer the billion of dollars that has been spent and at the end of the day the American saying, 'Sorry, we have no leverage even to put things in order in Iraq'?"

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Jeremiah lamented, "Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken, wail for her! bring balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed. 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers to the very skies...'" (Jer. 51:8-9). "I shall set fire to her cities, and it will devour all his environs" (Jer 50:32); "And her high gates will be set on fire; so the (nations) will (have) toil(ed) for nothing, and the nations become exhausted (because of the) fire" (Jer. 51:58).