Mahdi militia hit by U.S., Iraqi troops
Anybody else wonder who is going to be left to enjoy this freedom in Iraq if it is indeed ever settled into those benchmarks?
Moqtada al-Sadr: The man America has in its sights
Moqtada al-Sadr: The man America has in its sights
Independent UK
Published: 03 June 2007
The US wants to talk to Moqtada al-Sadr. He thinks they want to assassinate him. In this rare interview in Kufa, Iraq, the Shia cleric tells Nizar Latif why.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the man Washington blames for its failure to gain control in Iraq, has rejected a call to open direct talks with the US military and has accused the Americans of plotting to assassinate him.
The Shia cleric told The Independent on Sunday in an exclusive interview: "The Americans have tried to kill me in the past, but have failed... It is certain that the Americans still want me dead and are still trying to assassinate me.
"I am an Iraqi, I am a Muslim, I am free and I reject all forms of occupation. I want to help the Iraqi people. This is everything the Americans hate."
Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Iraqi Shias, spoke after leading Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque at Kufa, just over 100 miles south of Baghdad. It is one of the four Iraqi cities considered holy in Shia Islam. He always wears a black turban, the traditional symbol of a Shia cleric who can trace his ancestry to the Prophet Mohamed. But for the second time in two weeks, he also wore a white shroud - a symbol of his willingness to be martyred, and his belief that death is close at hand.
The young cleric inherited the aura of his father, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Sadr, who was murdered by Saddam Hussein's regime. He has been a thorn in the side of the Americans since the invasion, with his Mahdi Army - the military wing of Iraq's largest Arab grassroots political movement - having clashed with US and British forces. The movement has been accused of kidnapping five Britons in Baghdad last week, possibly in retaliation for the death of a senior Mahdi commander in Basra at the hands of British forces, but the Sadrists deny involvement.
Mr Sadr resurfaced recently after disappearing - possibly over the border to Iran - when the US began its security "surge" in Baghdad early this year. He ordered his fighters in Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold in the capital, not to resist the operation. Last week the US military said it wanted to open direct, peaceful talks with him, but the cleric told the IoS he rejected the idea.
"There is nothing to talk about," he said angrily. "The Americans are occupiers and thieves, and they must set a timetable to leave this country. We must know that they are leaving, and we must know when." He has reason to be wary of US offers to negotiate. As revealed by The Independent last month, respected Iraqi political figures believe the US army tried to kill or capture Mr Sadr after luring him to peace talks in Najaf in 2004.
"We are fighting the enemy that is greater in strength, but we are in the right," he said. "Even if that means our deaths, we will not stand idly by and suffer from this occupation. Islam exhorts us to die with dignity rather than live in shame."
Mr Sadr did not say how he thought the US planned to kill him. But it is clear his decision to stay out of the public eye for months was prompted by safety fears, amid a crackdown on the Mahdi Army that has seen key figures arrested and killed.
With US, British and Iraqi government forces still conducting operations against the Sadr movement and its army, the cleric warned he was prepared to launch another armed uprising. "The occupiers have tried to provoke us, but I ordered unarmed resistance for the sake of the people," he said. "We have been patient, exercising statesmanship, but if the occupation and oppression continues, we will fight." The Mahdi Army has been relatively quiet, but it is becoming more active in Baghdad, responding to a series of devastating suicide bombings by Sunni extremists.
Mr Sadr, whose rise to become one of the most influential figures in Iraq coincided with the US overthrow of Saddam, said his movement sought to follow the example of Hizbollah, the Shia armed resistance movement in Lebanon. "Hizbollah and the Mahdi Army are two sides of the same coin," he said. "We are together in the same trench against the forces of evil."
He also spoke about a spate of recent fighting between his followers and members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the other major Shia party which has its own armed Badr faction. The clashes sparked fears that the power struggle among Shias will explode into full conflict.
"What happened with the Badr organisation and the Mahdi Army in many parts of Iraq is the result of a sad misunderstanding," he said. "We have held discussions to stop this being repeated."
Mr Sadr has always been a fervent nationalist, and has recently held talks with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who have taken up arms against al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists, while still opposing the US-led occupation. Despite his calls for cross-sectarian unity in Iraq, the Mahdi Army is widely accused of operating death squads responsible for the deaths and ethnic cleansing of thousands of Sunnis and Iraqi Christians.
Mr Sadr also insisted he opposed Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs, referring to tentative talks between the US and Iran. "We reject such interference," he said. "Iraq is a matter for the Iraqis."
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Additional reporting by Phil Sands in Damascus
revel wrote:
Mahdi militia hit by U.S., Iraqi troops
Quote:BAGHDAD - As U.S. jets roared overhead, Mahdi Army militiamen on Sunday battled with Iraqi troops and local police searching for two militia leaders in the southern city of Diwaniyah. At least three people were killed and 24 wounded, official Iraqi sources reported.
...
Anybody else wonder who is going to be left to enjoy this freedom in Iraq if it is indeed ever settled into those benchmarks?
NO!
In 2005, the population of Iraq was alleged to be 27 million. It is alleged that since 2005 about 58,000 have been murdered and about 2 million have fled the country. That leaves 24 million + 942,000 + net new borns.
ican711nm wrote:revel wrote:
Mahdi militia hit by U.S., Iraqi troops
Quote:BAGHDAD - As U.S. jets roared overhead, Mahdi Army militiamen on Sunday battled with Iraqi troops and local police searching for two militia leaders in the southern city of Diwaniyah. At least three people were killed and 24 wounded, official Iraqi sources reported.
...
Anybody else wonder who is going to be left to enjoy this freedom in Iraq if it is indeed ever settled into those benchmarks?
NO!
In 2005, the population of Iraq was alleged to be 27 million. It is alleged that since 2005 about 58,000 have been murdered and about 2 million have fled the country. That leaves 24 million + 942,000 + net new borns.
And most of them want us out of the country.
in may 2006 (!) it was estimated that one-quarter of middle-class iraqis had already left the country !
i doubt that many will have returned !
imo iraq is simply disintegrating - there will just be a shell left in a few years .
hbg
Quote:In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class. The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department
source - christian science monitor :
IRAQIS FLEEING THEIR COUNTRY
Incredible!!
We went from; "We will never negotiate with terrorist" to considering giving them amnesty.
Are we losing our ass in Iraq or what?
Quote:Amnesty possible for Iraq insurgents: US ambassador by Roland Lloyd Parry
Sun Jun 3, 3:38 PM ET
Washington's ambassador to Iraq hinted Sunday that the United States was open to granting amnesty to former Al-Qaeda insurgents who fought against it in the blood-soaked country.
"As part of a political reconciliation process, amnesty can be very important," Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Fox News television, speaking from Baghdad.
"It can also be important in this particular context as we seek to draw as many elements as we can away from the fight ... against us and into the fight against a common enemy, Al-Qaeda.
"In terms of individual cases involving people who have American blood on their hands, that is something we have to consider very carefully."
The number two head of US forces in Iraq, Raymond Odierno, said on Thursday that the US was discussing cease-fires with some Iraqi insurgent groups in an effort to reduce attacks on US and Iraqi government forces.
May was the third most deadly month for US forces in Iraq since they led the invasion in 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. Scores of civilians have been dying each week in insurgent attacks.
The man who led coalition forces in Iraq during the first year of the occupation, the retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, said recently that the United States could forget about winning the war in Iraq, and could hope only to "stave off defeat."
Sanchez was the highest-ranking former military leader yet to suggest the Bush administration fell short in Iraq.
Crocker claimed progress however in winning over pro-insurgent peoples to the side of the US-backed Iraqi government, but insisted it was too soon to judge whether the US "surge" strategy of pouring thousands more troops in to stabilize parts of Iraq was working.
"Tribes and others that at one point sided with, or at least were sympathetic to, Al-Qaeda very definitely have changed their position and are now supporting Iraqi and coalition efforts against Al-Qaeda," he said.
But he added: "The long-term process leading to what we all hope is eventual stabilization, security and political accommodation ... will take a lot longer than September," when Crocker and the top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, are to report to Washington on progress.
Bush last month secured a multi-billion dollar budget to fund the war through September, and more troops are yet to arrive in Iraq under his "surge" strategy launched in January.
But senior members of Congress in Washington, both Democrat and Republican, have voiced expectations that Bush will be pressured into changing course later this year, possibly reducing troop numbers from September.
The funding bill demands that Iraq's government meet political "benchmarks" to demonstrate progress.
Iraq's President Jalal Talabani meanwhile Sunday confirmed the Iraqi government was negotiating with "national resistance" members to whom he was prepared to give amnesty.
"Then only al-Qaeda will remain as the main criminal terrorist group and it will be easy to eradicate it," he told ABC news.
"People are ready now to fight against -- to cooperate, against terrorism, and to cooperate with Iraqi armed forces ... when this Iraqi so-called national resistance movement will be convinced to come to the political process, the task of eradicating Al-Qaeda terrorist group will be easier."
Talabani expressed optimism about Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric and head of the Mahdi Army, Iraq's biggest militia, accused of carrying out sectarian attacks against Sunnis.
Sadr's movement "announced that they will ... support political process, very peaceful, and he asked his followers not to fight against Iraqi soldiers," Talabani said, though he warned that Sadr had "lost control of some of his militia."
He also insisted Iraq's government had made "good steps forward for national reconciliation," including resistance fighters who were joining the political process.
He said he expected that the Iraq army would be ready to defend the country by the end of 2008, but that US forces would continue to have "a long-term presence" there.
Crocker also stressed that progress would take time.
"There are two times out there, two clocks, an Iraqi clock and an American clock," he said. "And the American clock is running quite a bit faster than the Iraqi one."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070603/pl_afp/usiraqunrestdiplomacy_070603193802&printer=1;_ylt=AnJnre2JTJjfvu_z5p2TdE.tOrgF
You've done a good job Bush; this country needs more conservatives like you.
xingu wrote:ican711nm wrote:revel wrote:
Mahdi militia hit by U.S., Iraqi troops
Quote:BAGHDAD - As U.S. jets roared overhead, Mahdi Army militiamen on Sunday battled with Iraqi troops and local police searching for two militia leaders in the southern city of Diwaniyah. At least three people were killed and 24 wounded, official Iraqi sources reported.
...
Anybody else wonder who is going to be left to enjoy this freedom in Iraq if it is indeed ever settled into those benchmarks?
NO!
In 2005, the population of Iraq was alleged to be 27 million. It is alleged that since 2005 about 58,000 have been murdered and about 2 million have fled the country. That leaves 24 million + 942,000 + net new borns.
And most of them want us out of the country.
It is alleged that most of them want us out of the country as soon as they are capable of defending themselves without our help.
That was the old allege, the updated allege is that most of the Iraqis want us out of there like yesterday but like us they have a government that don't listen to its citizens. And they have a parliment that goes on vacations while their country is in choas. Probably in some kind of safer place like Iran or Syria.
I think conscription (the draft) looms.
Don't think so Steve. If it happened you would see the riots of the Vietnam days.
It's one thing for volunteers going off to war and getting killed; it's another to conscript them, send them off and get them killed.
revel wrote :
Quote:And they have a parliment that goes on vacations while their country is in choas. Probably in some kind of safer place like Iran or Syria.
and 25% plus of their middle-class have gone on permanet vacation from a land of chaos - and i guess that many of the ordinary iraqis would be happy to leave if they could find a country that would allow them entrance .
the really well-to-do iraqis , of course , left long ago . it's always a good idea to have some "universal currency" - gold will do nicely - stashed away in switzerland at a "private" bank .
btw when we were in switzerland three years ago we saw what "private" bank means . you can't just walk in off thhe street . you have to phone for an appointment and someone might open the door for you "if you qualify" - no pikers need apply - which included us
.
hbg
hbg
hamburger wrote:revel wrote :
Quote:And they have a parliment that goes on vacations while their country is in choas. Probably in some kind of safer place like Iran or Syria.
and 25% plus of their middle-class have gone on permanet vacation from a land of chaos - and i guess that many of the ordinary iraqis would be happy to leave if they could find a country that would allow them entrance .
the really well-to-do iraqis , of course , left long ago . it's always a good idea to have some "universal currency" - gold will do nicely - stashed away in switzerland at a "private" bank .
btw when we were in switzerland three years ago we saw what "private" bank means . you can't just walk in off thhe street . you have to phone for an appointment and someone might open the door for you "if you qualify" - no pikers need apply - which included us
.
hbg
hbg
Whats a piker?
I bet the Bushies all have private Switzerland bank accounts depositing all that oil money they have been getting while we suckers in the US pay $3.15 or higher gas prices.
Big oil companies post record profits for 2006
Maybe we should be more like this guy:
http://www.ky-leadernews.com/index.html
(about fifth story down)
Nothing too new, but it just seems to me we should be honestly trying to use alternative energy sources for a host of reasons and this article proves it can be done pretty cheap.
revel wrote:That was the old allege, the updated allege is that most of the Iraqis want us out of there like yesterday but like us they have a government that don't listen to its citizens. And they have a parliment that goes on vacations while their country is in choas. Probably in some kind of safer place like Iran or Syria.
The "old allege" has been replaced by the "new allege."
How do you know?
While I've seen a great many actual Iraq poll results, none of those have actually reported that a majority of the Iraqi people want us out of the country
before they are capable of defending themselves without our help.
So, revel or anyone, please provide links to actual poll results (not merely media reported, alleged poll results) that support your allegation of a "new allege."
revel wrote:
...
Nothing too new, but it just seems to me we should be honestly trying to use alternative energy sources for a host of reasons and this article proves it can be done pretty cheap.
I agree. We should be developing alternate sources of petroleum within America (e.g., ANWAR). Also even more important is the development within America of additional gasoline refineries.
More than 99.9% of earth heating and cooling ha been caused over the last 100 thousand years, and over the last 100 years, by the sun's radiation fluctuations and, to a much lesser amount, by volcanic emissions. Consequently, what we need to control earth temperature variations is some kind of human controlled, global
umbrella.
Quote: Consequently, what we need to control earth temperature variations is some kind of human controlled, global umbrella.
And, this is not exactly a bad idea. It has been proposed in the past to use a combination of solar umbrellas and solar focusing lenses to control the heating and cooling of our own planet.
Pursuing ANWR is not 'alternative energy.' And it's a drop in the figurative bucket.
Cycloptichorn
Ah, an umbrella. And there I was thinking anthropogenic global warming might be curbed by restricting greenhouse gas emissions, when really all we need is a giant umbrella to keep the earth cool. But there's a problem. It would keep the rain off too. And 99.9% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Steve 41oo wrote:Ah, an umbrella. And there I was thinking anthropogenic global warming might be curbed by restricting greenhouse gas emissions, when really all we need is a giant umbrella to keep the earth cool. But there's a problem. It would keep the rain off too. And 99.9% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
The umbrella is in space, of course. Made of a very thin layer of silvered plastic.
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:
...
Pursuing ANWR is not 'alternative energy.' And it's a drop in the figurative bucket.
Cycloptichorn
Yes, pursuing ANWR is pursuing alternate energy. It's an alternate to some middle east oil.
After development, ANWR is potentially a source exceeding 1% of America's energy requirements over the next 50 years thereafter.
All we need is about 50 additional such sources within America to augment our other current and developing domestic sources.
So let's get on with it and ignore the stupid malarkey.
ican711nm wrote:revel wrote:That was the old allege, the updated allege is that most of the Iraqis want us out of there like yesterday but like us they have a government that don't listen to its citizens. And they have a parliment that goes on vacations while their country is in choas. Probably in some kind of safer place like Iran or Syria.
The "old allege" has been replaced by the "new allege."
How do you know?
While I've seen a great many actual Iraq poll results, none of those have actually reported that a majority of the Iraqi people want us out of the country
before they are capable of defending themselves without our help.
So, revel or anyone, please provide links to actual poll results (not merely media reported, alleged poll results) that support your allegation of a "new allege."
Quote:Withdraw all US-led forces within six months ............................37% (9/06)
Only reduce US-led forces as the security situation
improves in Iraq. .............................................................................9% (9/06)
The whole part in its entirety
here
ican711nm wrote:After development, ANWR is potentially a source exceeding 1% of America's energy requirements over the next 50 years thereafter.
All we need is about 50 additional such sources within America... So let's get on with it and ignore the stupid malarkey.
Why of course. Find oil in America and then you dont have to invade foreign countries! What have all those clever petrogeologists at Exxon Chevron and BP been doing! Get out there and find the oil....It must be there if you look hard enough.
