Iraqi Minister of Information triumphantly returns as Prime Minister

Remember the infamous Iraqi Minister of Information, who would defiantly state that Saddam’s army was overwhelming and destroying U.S. forces by the droves, even as you could plainly see U.S. soldiers handing out candy to kids behind him?

Well, he’s reemerged as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

From CNN:

“In Iraq, we’ll never be in civil war,” al-Maliki told CNN’s “Late Edition” on Sunday.

Despite Health Ministry figures that put the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July at about 3,400 — more than double the 1,600 killed in January — the prime minister said violence was decreasing in his country.

Al-Maliki did not dispute figures published in “The Economist” magazine that put unemployment at as high as 40 percent, with double-digit inflation and as much as 20 percent of the population in poverty.

“But this is a new Iraq, and inherited from the previous regime who left unemployment and destruction,” said al-Maliki, who won power in December’s elections.

Asked when coalition troops might leave, the Iraqi leader was equivocal.

“It could be a year or less, or a few months,” he said. “This has to do with the — with our success of the democratic — or the political process in Iraq, and to have the security agencies to protect this process.”

–WKW