Middle East News
At least 69 killed, 38 wounded in Iraqi violence (Roundup)
Mar 27, 2008, 14:14 GMT
Fighters loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr pose with their weapons next to a burned Iraqi police car following clashes in Basra, southern Iraq on 27 March 2008. Fighting between Iraqi security forces and the Mehdi Army militia continued in Basra. A health official said 50 people had been killed and 200 wounded since a major Iraqi military operation began on Tuesday. EPA/HAIDER AL-ASSADEE
Baghdad - At least 69 people were killed and 38 wounded in separate attacks as intense fighting involving Shiite militants continued across Iraq, media reports said Thursday
There was also continued fighting in Basra and parts of Baghdad.
US air raids struck militants' hideouts in the city of Hillah, some 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, killing 60 militants and damaging houses in the city, The Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency said Thursday.
Abdul-Latif Rayan, media spokesman of multinational forces, told VIO that the airstrikes on Hillah came as Iraqi forces requested the help of the multinational forces to fight militants in the city.
Iraqi forces and militants have been intensively fighting in Hillah's Zahraa district since Tuesday, leaving three Iraqi troops wounded.
On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki set a 72-hour deadline for Shiite militants in to lay down their arms or face 'severe penalties'.
Mahdi Army leader and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - whose organisation is reported to be the main opposition to government troops, has spoken of possible negotiations to end the violence.
In another development, a Kurdish police officer was killed Thursday and six members of the Kurdish security forces were wounded in an explosion in the city of Kirkuk, some 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, VOI said.
A vehicle bomb targeted a Kurdish patrol in Kirkuk's Qods street, killing a police officer and wounding six members of the Kurdish forces.
Medical sources told VOI that Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital had admitted 20 Iraqi troops seriously injured during clashes in Iraq's second-bigggest city of Basra.
The wounded were moved from Basra to Baghdad's airport for treatment, VOI said. Basra's police chief survived from an explosion that targeted his convoy in the late hours of Wednesday, VOI said.
Three of his security guards were killed when a bomb went off in Basra's al-Jabila area. Clashes between Iraqi security forces and Shiite fighters in Basra continued, with at least 40 people reported dead and 200 wounded.
Nearly 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers are involved in a security operation, which is being directed by al-Maliki, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, according to VOI.
Iraqi troops backed by helicopters have engaged in pitched battles with Shiite fighters since the early hours of Wednesday in many parts of Basra, witnesses told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Life in the city has come to a standstill with shops and markets closing and power cuts throwing it into darkness, the witnesses said.
In Baghdad, medical sources told VOI that three civilians were killed during intense clashes between militants and Iraqi security forces on Thursday, after mortar shells fell on a location of Iraqi forces in the city.
Two people were killed and 12 wounded when mortar shells fell in Karaj Alawy area in Baghdad, as two other mortar shells fell eastern the Iraqi capital.
In Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood, fighting continued to break out Thursday between Iraqi troops backed by US air support and al- Mahdi Army fighters.
On Wednesday, the fighting had left least 15 people killed and 100 injured, al-Arabyia television reported.
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Older Talkback
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Current events demonstrate just how much of the reduction in violence during the surge period could be theoretically attributable to the cease-fire Iraq has enjoyed. Technically it's still in force, but it sure looks like things have been pushed out of control. Iraq ends up in a power striggle between al-Maliki representing the official government, seen as fronting Bush and Cheney by many of the militants they're fighting.
al-Maliki has perviously called off U.S. troops' efforts to get Basra under control, and the British finally withdrew sometime back - and I doubt they're coming back, as the Labour government has its hands full with domestic problems, and the resurgence of the Conservatives.
I'm assuming that this latest action stems from Cheney's recent visit, and the Mahdi now see al-Maliki as nothing but a Bush puppet.
Our own economic news is on the minds of the U.S. public, and the question is how much entanglement by U.S. troops they'll put up with if the civil war in Iraq busts loose. al-Maliki is supposed to be battling al Qaeda in the North, so this would be a second front to control. McCain will have a tougher time retaining support for his Presidency.
----------------
abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4535114&page=1
(Key paragraph): 'Mahdi fury is focused on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who is personally overseeing an operation against the militias in Basra. The crisis over the control of Basra is seen as a test of the government's ability to take over security.'
Defiant Shiites flexed their muscle today by sending tens of thousands of supporters into the streets of Baghdad, raining shells into the Green Zone and holding the Iraqi army at bay in the key oil city of Basra.
Amid all the turmoil, a bomb blasted a crucial oil pipeline in Basra, triggering a massive fire and threatening the country's ability to export oil. The pipeline blast sent the world's price of oil to $107 a barrel.
The growing anger over the government's attempt in Basra to crack down on the forces of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatens to end a truce with the powerful Mahdi Army. The Madhi Army has twice embroiled U.S. troops in vicious fighting in much of southern Iraq. Another uprising could trigger a virtual civil war and bring into doubt the Bush administration's ability to withdraw U.S. troops.
Sadr's supporters lashed out at the U.S. and the Iraqi government today. Rockets and mortars fired from their Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City showered the Green Zone with rockets and mortar shells for the fourth straight day. One landed next to the U.S. Embassy compound.
Thick, black smoke billowed from inside the heavily fortified home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government, but no injuries were reported in today's barrage. Since the Green Zone attacks have started, however, one U.S. soldier, two American civilians and an Iraqi soldier have been wounded and an American financial analyst has been killed.
Anger over the Basra crackdown has spread across southern Iraq where the Mahdi Army is strongest and is vying for control with government forces as well as rival Shiite groups. Seventeen deaths were reported in scattered fighting around Sadr City and 60 were killed fighting in the southern city of Hilla.
'I'm assuming that this latest action stems from Cheney's recent visit, and the Mahdi now see al-Maliki as nothing but a Bush puppet.'
Get over your BDS. You really have things twisted around.
Sadr and Maliki are going to fight for power. There are 2 main shiite factions and neither want to share much. Bush/Cheney is a temporary sideshow for these guys. The prize is Iraq and billions in wealth.
Trying to make Bush the fountainhead of all that occurs in Iraq is really naive.
Hopefully Maliki would not have started this fight if he wasn't prepared to finish it.
We'll see what happens.
Sounds like a coup attempt in the making and al-Maliki is going to do it Saddam style. Great, this is what it has come to. Turns out Saddam had good judgement, I guess. Coups are always risky for the power to be because to deal with them (big ones anyways) effectively they need to be crushed genocide-style. Good luck with the bloodletting. Glad the U.S. can team up with the winning side this time, uh, I guess. Bring out the flying gun ships!
Give us some of the bullcrap propaganda you're so famous for; where you tell us how well things are going, and how victory has been achieved.
Tell us how well the U.S. economy is going ... whoops!
money.cnn.com/2008/03/27/news/economy/gdp/?postversion=2008032710
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Economic growth was nearly flat in the last three months of 2007, according to a government report released Thursday.
The Commerce Department's final reading on gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic activity, grew at an annual rate of 0.6%, adjusted for inflation, in the fourth quarter. The reading was unchanged from the preliminary fourth-quarter reading and in line with economists' expectations.
---------
Tell us what a stable leader we have ... whoops!
www.tomflocco.com/fs/SecretServIntelSay.htm
Washington—November 17, 2005—TomFlocco.com—Secret Service members attached to White House domestic security, FBI and CIA agents, and written national security field reports all confirm that President Bush has been using drugs which could be affecting his performance as the nation’s war-time commander-in-chief.
Multiple federal agents having direct knowledge and access to Bush’s medical records say the President has switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges which have led to tirades and explosive personal conduct among White House aides, absent required random drug testing of all public employees and elected officials.
archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/13/bush.fainting/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush fainted for a brief time Sunday in the residence of the White House while eating a pretzel and watching a professional football game on television, the White House said.
Bush's physician, Air Force Col. Richard Tubb, said the president blacked out and fell to the floor from a couch but appeared to have recovered quickly.
RE:
'Sadr and Maliki are going to fight for power. There are 2 main shiite factions and neither want to share much. Bush/Cheney is a temporary sideshow for these guys. The prize is Iraq and billions in wealth.
Trying to make Bush the fountainhead of all that occurs in Iraq is really naive. Hopefully Maliki would not have started this fight if he wasn't prepared to finish it.'
-------------
Since Al-Maliki has not accomplished anything meaningful since taking office, at least success would be a first for him. How's Mosul going? Kirkuk?
The upcoming provincial elections are the primary trigger for this - the Shia groups in Basra have been funding projects for the poor (just as Hamas did in Gaza when they bear Fatah). I notice you did not mention those elections at all, since you're just spouting more of the rockheaded ignorance that got us into this position. What's naive here are your comments.
If Bush is not the catalyst, then who the hell is? Whose policies are these? Whose failed strategy has led to this? Who let idiot Bremer dismiss the Iraqi army, only to see them become the Sunni insurgency?
The key to the current crisis would be getting al-Sadr to reverse his recent statements, and to tamp down the violence now spreading out of the South towards Baghdad, where the Shia have taken over quite a lot of territory which was formerly Sunni-occupied. The question is whether al-Sadr actually has tangible control over his own forces, or if the splinter groups he was trying to get rid of now wield influence of their own.
www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogi n
(From 'The Bush Tragedy')
'Cheney did not share Rove’s belief in Bush’s great political gifts. Instead, Weisberg argues, he saw in the new president an easily manipulable vehicle for his own longstanding agenda. He did not strive to be Bush’s friend, but he became the president’s continual and loyal courtier. “Cheney had figured out how to play on the son’s sense of his reborn self, flattering the maturity of his judgment,” Weisberg notes. “There was no need to spell out the implicit proposition: You have the self-confidence and inner security to rely on me.” Cheney was not alone in persuading Bush (who needed little persuasion) to launch the disastrous war in Iraq, but without Cheney the conflict might never have overcome the opposition of many in the administration. Cheney was even more central to some of the other damaging actions of Bush’s presidency: the assaults on due process and civil liberties; the defense of torture; the heightened secrecy; the contempt for international law and international organizations; and, perhaps most of all, the imperial view of the presidency, based on Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” and (in Weisberg’s words) his “lifelong goal” of “making the presidency stronger.”'
Iraq is not one country and it certainly will never know democracy. If not Saddam, than someone else from one faction controlling the rest. Why waste US lives and money on a lost cause?
Just Nukum and be over with it.
We should have helped Saddam take over Iran - it's just what these people needed. Someone to theaten them and keep them in order.
RE: 'Iraq is not one country and it certainly will never know democracy. If not Saddam, than someone else from one faction controlling the rest. Why waste US lives and money on a lost cause?'
---------------
A look at the history of Iraq and how it's leaders were installed show how the country was held together by strong leaders (and that included controlling the Shia majority) - that's why Bush Sr. left Saddam in power in 1991. The question over the next few days is whether the whole thing will fly apart, further strengthening Iran's position (another reason Bush Sr. left Saddam in charge).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq
'At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It initially formed two former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Baghdad, and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state.'
A government spokesman in Baghdad was just captured, and the demonstrations are in Sadr City, a Shia area. This is strictly now a Shia-on-Shia conflict, despite the cease-fire of al-Sadr. If al-Maliki exerts too much pressure, he could theoretically generate enough resentment that a true armed conflict could break out, imperiling U.S. diplomats and others in the Green Zone, which is only a few square miles in area.
The last paragraph included below describes the politics of the situation.
=================
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq28mar28,1,3783015.stor y
The bold mid-afternoon kidnapping of Tahseen Sheikhly is a sign of the unrest spreading since Iraqi security forces started clamping down on Shiite militiamen in Basra.
BAGHDAD -- Rockets and mortars rained down on Baghdad today, and a high-ranking Iraqi government spokesman was abducted from his home, as violence continued in the wake of a crackdown on Shiite Muslim militiamen.
Scores of people have died since the fighting erupted early Tuesday, including at least 51 in the southern oil port city of Basra, where the Iraqi offensive began. At least 15 people, most of them civilians, were reported killed in attacks today in Baghdad and nearby Babil province to the south. Skirmishes also continued in Basra, where a pipeline carrying oil to the city's port was hit by a major blast that sent flames soaring into the sky.
In Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, thousands of supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr marched through the streets demanding the ouster of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and accusing him of targeting Sadr loyalists in the Basra offensive. Maliki, meanwhile, rejected negotiations with what he called 'criminal gangs' to end the violence.
'Their only choice is to hand over their weapons and sign pledges that they will henceforth abide by the law and return to the right path,' said Maliki, who Wednesday gave militiamen 72 hours to put down their weapons.
Police said gunmen attacked the east Baghdad home of Tahseen Sheikhly, a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan launched in February 2007 to stabilize the capital. According to officials in the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, the attackers shot and wounded at least one of Sheikhly's guards and ransacked his home before fleeing with the spokesman.
Sheikhly has appeared frequently at news conferences alongside U.S. officials discussing what they consider progress of the security plan. The bold abduction, in the middle of the afternoon, was a sign of the spreading insecurity since the Basra offensive began.
The Iraqi prime minister and U.S. officials have denied Sadr's charges that the operation is politically motivated and aimed at crushing the cleric and his supporters ahead of provincial elections in October. They insist the effort is aimed at rogue elements who have refused to abide by a cease-fire that Sadr called for his militiamen last August.
(Iran's influence is all over this, and while they support al-Sadr, they don't want his influence to grow to the point that they cannot control him - read the details in the link itself)
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/27/basra.analysis/
(Key points)
'Iran's very good at putting pressure on you, forcing you to split, and anything that squeezes out the side, Iran picks up and turns into hardline factions,' Ware said. 'That's exactly what's happened to Muqtada. He's had purge after purge after purge of belligerent commanders, and they've all been swept up by Iran.
'And now the most lethal attacks on U.S. forces, the most coordinated attacks on U.S. forces, the most daring attacks on U.S. forces in the country are committed by Iranian-backed breakaway elements of Muqtada's militia faction.'
The violence in Basra -- which has spread to Shiite areas throughout the country, including Baghdad -- is a kind of fighting Americans are unaccustomed to seeing, said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Sheppard, CNN's senior military analyst.
'This is intra-Shia. This is not Sunni vs. Shia, this is not civil war, this is not sectarian violence, it's intra-Shia politics for control of the government,' he said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is trying to hold together his political alliance -- an alliance that includes the political wings of the militias he's fighting, Sheppard said.
'If this alliance breaks apart because of the fighting, you've got chaos within the Parliament,' Sheppard said.
'Multiple federal agents having direct knowledge and access to Bush’s medical records say the President has switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges which have led to tirades and explosive personal conduct among White House aides, absent required random drug testing of all public employees and elected officials.'
Heh heh - do you really believe that? You need to get back on YOUR meds...
I think its really too early to tell what the outcome of current crisis/conflict in Iraq. If Maliki started this before he could finish it, well then it will cost him (everyone). It certainly will clarify which units are loyal and if the Iraqi military is capable of conducting major operations. If he is able to keep a lid on things in Baghdad while he crushes the extra-governmental militias in Basra, it will be a huge step forward. Before the smoke clears, people will try their best to paint a picture of chaos/failure. Until the government is able to establish itself as THE authority with a monopoly on force, then there will not be significant progress that could lead to US disengagement.
This was a necessary step. Let's just hope the timing was right.
Gaiacomm International working on IED defense..
'Multiple federal agents having direct knowledge and access to Bush’s medical records say the President has switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges which have led to tirades and explosive personal conduct among White House aides, absent required random drug testing of all public employees and elected officials.'
Heh heh - do you really believe that? You need to get back on YOUR meds...
(Bush has a clear history of drug use and alcoholism, and in times of stress, there's a tendency to backslide. The White House has no drug-testing policy. I think Bush is paranoid, and not in touch with reality.)
--------------------------------------------
'I think its really too early to tell what the outcome of current crisis/conflict in Iraq. If Maliki started this before he could finish it, well then it will cost him (everyone). It certainly will clarify which units are loyal and if the Iraqi military is capable of conducting major operations. If he is able to keep a lid on things in Baghdad while he crushes the extra-governmental militias in Basra, it will be a huge step forward. Before the smoke clears, people will try their best to paint a picture of chaos/failure. Until the government is able to establish itself as THE authority with a monopoly on force, then there will not be significant progress that could lead to US disengagement.
This was a necessary step. Let's just hope the timing was right.'
(That's a very reasonable analysis - but I think we're seeing a lot of interference by Iran, and backing of certain Shia factions in Iraq. This has been building for a long time, and the U.S. is not in the best position to offer military backing for al-Maliki at this point. The more we interfere, the more al-Maliki is seen as being propped up by the U.S., rather than Iraq's elected leader. What it DOES point out is that al Qaeda is a minor problem in scale in terms of the potential damage from the Shia. This is all a leadup to Petraeus' next testimony in early April, and this Shia situation is not his preferred backdrop. Bush, even today, is deflecting from the current problem and using isolated statistics to attempt to talk about something else, while not acknowledging the corruption in Iraq's ministries, and their loss of income from the pipeline bombing. Getting Iraq to BUDGET, and getting them to SPEND, are two different issues).
(Even worse is Bush's blaming Congress for 'threatening' Iraq's leaders. If that's not paranoia, I don't know what is; and I doubt that the American public is buying it.)
www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSN27359266
'DAYTON, Ohio, March 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush defended the pace of political and economic reform in Iraq on Thursday and accused members of the U.S. Congress of 'hectoring' Baghdad and threatening its leaders.'
www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/GJLIFESTYLES_01/9267010 44/-1/FOSLIFESTYLES
U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel writes in a new book that the United States needs independent leadership and possibly another political party, while suggesting the Iraq war might be remembered as one of the five biggest blunders in history.
Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate's strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems 'a reckless foreign policy ... that is divorced from a strategic context.'
Hagel, who's been a harsh critic of the war since 2003, writes that the invasion of Iraq was 'the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence.'
The Vietnam veteran said he had hoped the lessons from that war would give the nation's leaders perspective before troops were sent to Iraq.
'To the astonishment of those of us who lived through the agony of Vietnam, these lessons were ignored in the run-up to the Iraq War,' he writes.
Hagel said Vice President Dick Cheney and others 'cherry-picked intelligence' and used fear to intensify 'war sloganeering.'
During visits to the Middle East in December 2002, Hagel said, Israel's top security officials asked, 'Do you really understand what you are getting yourselves into?'
Hagel said Bush personally assured him that he would exhaust diplomatic avenues before committing troops to Iraq. The senator said he voted for the war resolution based on those assurances, but regrets the vote because it's now clear that lawmakers were presented with lies and wishful thinking.
Last year, Hagel was the only member of his party on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's decision to dispatch an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.
Particularly of Shiites! It is a victory for Islam in actuality, as the crusaders realize that, in spite of ruining the teachings of Islam through agents like bin laden wahabies, saudie arabia, they cannot stop the on slought of Islam.
SO THEY HAVE ADOPTED THE POLICY OF SHIITE GENOCIDE! BUT THEY FORGET THAT POWERS OF ALMIGHTY GOD, GOD OF JESUS SON OF MARY, MOSES, ABRAHAM, AND ALIKE, ARE JUST UNLIMITED.
'...switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges...'
'SO THEY HAVE ADOPTED THE POLICY OF SHIITE GENOCIDE!'
So many raving kooks no wonder the world is a mess...
Only an idiot would lump together Bush's admitted past use of drugs and alcohol, and some fanatical Islamic nutcake.
Welcome, idiot.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_substance_abuse_controversy
An editorial letter by Graydon Carter in Vanity Fair for January, 2008, quotes a new book about Bush:
'a new book by former British foreign secretary Lord Owen may supply a clue. In The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair, and the Intoxication of Power (ISBN 1842752197), Owen recalls the time in 2002 when the commander in chief collapsed while sitting on a sofa watching a football game. (Official cause: he’d choked on a pretzel.) The presidential head hit a table on the way to the floor, he suffered an abrasion on the left side of his face, and a blood sample was rushed to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore. Owen says he was told by a British doctor who had visited Johns Hopkins that lab technicians there found that the blood contained significant amounts of alcohol.'
www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogi n&oref=slogin
(This was always a risk; seeing Shiite members of the 'official' Army defect to join militias, along with arms and vehicles. The British press is pointing out the failure of their own military to secure Basra when they had the chance; and giving more details)
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3635827.ece
Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, flew down to Saddam Hussain’s former palace in central Basra to take personal control of the offensive, led by 30,000 Iraqi troops backed by para-military police.
But reports from the city suggested that the Iraqi forces had failed to make any significant inroads and a deadline imposed for the militias to disarm was ignored. Instead Iraqi police were defecting to the militia ranks.
Mr al-Maliki had hoped to lead his army to victory in Shia militia strongholds in Basra, Iraq’s oil city in the south. Instead, Iraq’s Shia prime minister was left with the prospect of disaster as district after district of his own capital fell to the rival Mahdi Army.
Residents of Basra complained that water and electricity had been turned off in the three main areas besieged by the Iraqi Army. Estimates of the death toll in Basra are as high as 200, with hundreds more wounded.
www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p25s01-woiq.html
The US-funded Arab television station Al Hurra reported that a contingent of US Marines was now in Basra's city center and involved mainly in sniper operations. This could not be immediately confirmed with the US military. But several residents reported that they saw snipers posted on roof tops especially in the neighborhood of Tamimyah.
The US military has so far insisted that only US advisers and so-called 'transition teams' embedded with Iraqi troops are in Basra. Coalition aircraft are providing air cover and surveillance support.
Al Sharqiya TV, a private Iraqi station often critical of the Iraqi government, showed what it said were exclusive images of masked militiamen – some of them in military fatigues – parading in Humvees they had seized from Iraqi government forces in Basra. The words 'Mahdi Army' and 'Mahdi's Followers' were spray painted in black on the white-washed vehicles. There was also footage of what looked like the remains of burnt Iraqi Army vehicles. The militiamen chanted and danced, flashing victory signs.
Yahya al-Taiee, a Basra-based lawyer and member of the Sadr movement, said many Iraqi soldiers have surrendered themselves and their vehicles to the Mahdi Army. His claims could not be immediately verified.
'The White House has no drug-testing policy. I think Bush is paranoid, and not in touch with reality.'
It couldn't have been made any more clearer throughout our interaction that the same holds true for you. You are a sick person who needs to have people feel contempt for him. I am not kidding, you need to get help because you are out of touch with reality.
'Bush the Butcher of Muslims'
In that case; 4 more years! 4 more years!
'SO THEY HAVE ADOPTED THE POLICY OF SHIITE GENOCIDE'
This is shiites killing each other. Let them do what they do best.
'BUT THEY FORGET THAT POWERS OF ALMIGHTY GOD, GOD OF JESUS SON OF MARY, MOSES, ABRAHAM, AND ALIKE, ARE JUST UNLIMITED.'
God doesn't like people who fly aircraft full of people in to buildings full of people. Look at all that God gave us and all that has been kept from you and you can see that God has no use for you as well.
Generally we get a stack of lies; and THEN the personal insults.
Today it appears he's even out of lies.
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725798,00.html
A charade is going on in Baghdad and it may end badly. The U.S. military has been very careful to say that the current offensive by the Iraqi government in southern Iraq was simply 'enforcement of the law in Basra.' It was not directed against the Mahdi Army, the militia run by radical Shi'ite cleric (and political powerhouse) Moqtada al-Sadr, whose seven-month-old cease-fire has been key to the success of the American surge. The U.S. maintained that line today even though it was clear that the 'criminal gangs' battling government forces in Basra were identifiable as elements of the Mahdi Army. In a military briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner continued to define the Mahdi Army as those parts of it that observe the cease-fire while those that ignore it were referred to as criminal elements.
The larger question, though, is how many 'criminal elements' can ignore the cease-fire before the cease-fire becomes meaningless as a practical matter. Even as Bergner characterized the fight as a battle between the Iraqi government and 'criminals,' rockets launched from the militia's Sadr City stronghold poured into the Green Zone for the fourth straight day.
So far the U.S. has mostly stayed out of the fighting, preferring to let the Iraqi government and Iraqi troops take the lead. Bergner would not comment on whether the Americans would become involved more directly if the Iraqi government could not complete its Basra operation. 'I would say,' he said, 'that's a very hypothetical question at this time.'
It is also the question of the hour. If the violence continues to intensify and the Iraqi government cannot finish what it started then the U.S. must choose whether to throw its troops into the fight. If that happens then the seven-month cease-fire, which was vital to the dramatic drop in violence late last year, will truly be over and a new round of bloodletting may be about to begin.
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725265,00.html
Could Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempts to re-establish control over Basra backfire? There is a growing possibility that it could become a wider intra-Shi'ite war, drawing in the forces loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose ceasefire has been key to the success of the U.S. 'surge'? If so, the consequences for American military strategy in Iraq in an all-important political year will be grave.
Maliki's government targeted Basra because it could. Unlike many other southern cities where fighting has escalated in recent weeks, Maliki has built an independent power base among the security forces there. But Tuesday's sweep of Basra could turn sour in other southern cities where the central government's power is weak. Indeed, many Shi'ites are seeing this not just as an example of the Shi'ite Maliki taking on other Shi'ites (including Sadrists) but of America backing the Prime Minister up in a de facto Shi'a civil war. Iraqi government forces have attacked Shi'ite militias and gangs in at least seven major southern Iraq cities in the past two weeks. And America has been there to support Maliki's troops every time.
In response, Sadr loyalists have already taken to the streets in Baghdad, where U.S. troops will have to deal with the backlash. U.S. officials have so far shied away from blaming Sadr for the recent rise of violence (including an Easter attack on the Green Zone), mostly because Sadr's ceasefire has been key to the success of the surge. (General David Petraeus has pointed the finger at Iran instead.) But as clashes increase, they may not be able to dance around it for much longer.
The violence is escalating as Patraeus (sic), the architect of the nine-month military 'surge' involving some 30,000 extra troops in Iraq, prepares for a scheduled Apr. 8 and 9 report to congress on his progress in Iraq. They also come as he and Defense Secretary Robert Gates waffle over whether to withdraw five combat brigades by July, reducing troop levels down from about 158,000 to 140,000 — the pre-surge peak. If the fighting spreads to other southern cities and attacks by Shi'ite militias increase, intra-Shiite violence may be the wrench that jams the whole works of a meaningful reduction of troops.
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725265,00.html
If the U.S. decides to actively go after the Shi'ite forces in the south, it would mean reopening a southern front where American forces once fought some of the Iraq war's fiercest battles against Sadr but now have only a shadow presence. That would involve draining the concentration of surge troops around Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. It might even require more troop extensions or additional deployments to hold ground and maintain modest gains. Moving against the Shi'ite strongholds could then open opportunities for the Sunni fighters of al-Qaeda to strike Iraqi and U.S. targets in the Sunni triangle as the American heat turns south.
This week's violence in Baghdad and Basra followed several days of bloodshed in the Shi'ite city of Kut, some 100 miles southeast of the capital, where Sadr loyalists clashed with police forces largely controlled by their Shi'ite rivals, the Badr Corps militants of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, and with government troops affiliated with Maliki's Da'awa party.
'This was expected. It was just a matter of timing,' said Vali Nasr, Tufts University scholar and author of the bestselling book, The Shi'a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future. 'The ceasefire and the surge allowed everyone to regroup and rearm. There is still the Shi'a-Sunni conflict. There is still the Sadr-Badr conflict. The surge and the ceasefire merely kept them apart, but there has never been a real political settlement,' he said. 'No, the big battle for Iraq hasn't been fought yet. The future of Iraq has not been determined.' Nasr said the question now remains just how deep U.S. forces will get sucked into a Shi'ite civil war.
Sadr's ceasefire did allow U.S. forces to concentrate on hunting al-Qaeda in Baghdad, Mosul and Diyala without having an open front in the south. But it also allowed the cleric to rearm, clean his own house and retake the reins of his splintering movement. However, Sadr's devoted rank and file seem to be itching for a fight now as the Iraqi government and their American backers take sides with rival factions and continue to crack down on Sadr's Jaish al Mahdi, or JAM. 'Sadr has had an interest in making sure everyone knows he's still around,' Nasr said. 'He's not going to go down without a fight.'
The conveniently quiet arrangement between Sadr and the U.S. is now being challenged from within and from without. 'There are all kinds of groups who would be interested in dragging [Sadr] into positions and into conflicts that he doesn't want to be in,' said Anthony Cordesman, a top Iraq analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Cordesman warns against jumping to conclusions that the south is rising up. He says it's more likely that the recent violence is a sign that the many Shi'ite factions that have broken from Sadr's movement are seeking to prove their mettle, and that al-Qaeda cells are seeking new ways to strike as they are forced out of more and more areas by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Cordesman echoes Army Lt. Gen Ray Odierno, who, after leading U.S. forces in Iraq for the past 15 months, recently reported that Sadr seemed to be softening and his movement becoming more of a faith-based political movement than a militia waiting to kill Americans or take power by force. That said, Odierno expressed concern over the growing Shi'ite rivalries. 'I worry about intra-Shi'a violence a bit,' he said upon returning to the Pentagon earlier this month. 'That could, you know, spiral out of control.'
'Generally we get a stack of lies; and THEN the personal insults.'
Indeed, I am just watching you spin your wheels trying to peddle your defeatism. All is lost because the Iraqi version of the crypts and the bloods are killing each other! No one is buying it. You desperately need to get a life, you are beyond pathetic.
So go ahead, spam away. Opinion polls are edging higher on Iraqi sucess even considering your boss, George Soros is funding a Iraqi defeatism propaganda offensive to the tune of
Soros-attack groups target McCain
By Michelle Malkin • February 25, 2008 01:50 PM
I love how Reuters calls the Soros-sponsored operatives uniting against John McCain “grass-roots:”
Democratic grass roots organizations on Monday launched a $20 million campaign to defeat Republican John McCain in the 2008 U.S. presidential election by focusing their attention on rising costs of the Iraq war.
The campaign, supported by former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, aims to link war spending with the ailing U.S. economy.
“There’s a great concern and anxiety, angst out there among most Americans about their economic security,” Edwards said in a teleconference from North Carolina. “All these things are made much worse by concern about what’s happening in Iraq … People don’t understand why we’re spending $500 billion and counting in Iraq.”
…Groups taking part in the new campaign are the Center for American Progress, USAction, MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org, Service Employees International Union and Americans United for Change.
What Reuters forgot to mention:
The Center for American Progress is Clintonista John Podesta’s think tank funded with Soros cash.
MoveOn is a Soros operation.
USAction is tied to Soros.
VoteVets.org’s chief adviser is Soros-backed Gen. Wesley Clark. And Americans United for Change is a Soros-linked, BDS front group.
Iraq is one big Fubar....time to leave the people to the myseries they so long for, one faction after another fighting forever and a day. Evil has invaded Iraq and fear has chased the people into their houses. Sorry....but the US cannot maintain any stability with so many groups vying for power. Pull the plug, this saga is over, a failed attempt at democracy for those who dont want it.
RE: Until the government is able to establish itself as THE authority with a monopoly on force, then there will not be significant progress that could lead to US disengagement.
Until the government establishes itself as being representative of the people, then there will be no democracy. Perhaps, the people the government acts like it represents are not die hard believers in a justice for all type of governing.
One Nation
why is it that in the so-called 'coalition of the willing' fighting for freedom in Iraqalqaeda only the United States is willing to go after and kill enemy? The cowardly brits hide behind walled compounds while our guys bravely engage the terrorists in this war on evil. Certainly we can not expect the analicki shia to fight anyone since they are brothers with the Iraqalqaeda terrorists. And, the communist oriented beaurocrats at the UN are just a bunch of effeminate wimps who only want to cry about global warming. So leave it to America to have to go solo, as usual, in a glorious, patriotic effort to save the world from the forces of evil.
Once we get control of our oil, we will have the resources necessary to quickly strike at all the evil in Iran, and eliminate it. By then we will be prepared to take the battle just a few hundred miles further, to Armageddon for our final fight between good and evil. In the shock and awe of it all we shall fight many enemy, and many terrorist nations. We will really find out who is with us and who is against us, but we will not be surprised when some of our so called friends in the coalition bear false witness against us and become enemy. That is ok because we are used to enemy ganging up on us, and our God is on our side, and therefore we will win anyway.
'Only an idiot would lump together Bush's admitted past use of drugs and alcohol, and some fanatical Islamic nutcake.'
Do you read what you write?
You were alleging that Bush CURRENTLY uses drugs and alcohol - in inventive and ridiculous combinations I might add...
You were not alleging that he used drugs and alcohol in the PAST.
This is the Commander in Chief you are denigrating during a time of war. This encourages our enemies. Any adversarial propaganda machine will try to do the following (especially when adversary is democratic):
1. Undermine the faith of the people in their leadership;
2. Undermine the faith of the people in their strategic mission;
3. Undermine the faith of the people in their tactical capability to win.
Think about it.
You are playing into the conspiracy theories of others. Just like you were sucked into that nonsense, so you too will suck others into that pile of crap. That islamic nut job is very deep into that pile of crap. That is what you both have in common.
With all of the bad news you have been smoking for 5 years about our imminent defeat and the hopelessness of our cause and the unjust liberation of Iraq, you will probably not be able to grasp the fact that we lost more people on a bad day in WWII than we have lost in the last 5 years in Iraq. 2-3 times more Americans die EACH MONTH in car accidents and from hospital infections than have died in 5 YEARS in Iraq.
Of course any death anywhere tragically shatters the lives of everyone
touched.
The constant drip drip of defeatism parroted at the highest levels of our government is life giving mana from heaven for our enemies, the kiss of death to our allies, and has distorted the public's perception and undermined their will to fight.
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Sadr supporters asking for Maliki ousterMar 27th, 2008 - 14:47:40
www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/27/mideast/iraq.php
(Note also the loss of one of two major pipelines, which will cause a jump in gas prices)
BAGHDAD: Thousands of supporters of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad on Thursday to protest against a three-day-old crackdown against his followers and to call for the downfall of the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
There were demonstrations in the districts of Sadr City, Kadhimiya and Shula. An Interior Ministry source said hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets.
'We demand the downfall of the Maliki government,' said a Sadr City resident, Hussein Abu Ali. 'It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney.'
The authorities had imposed curfews across southern Iraq in an effort to halt the spread of violence after the largest military offensive carried out by Iraqi forces without major support from U.S. or British combat units.
Saboteurs blew up one of Iraq's two main oil-export pipelines from Basra, cutting off a third of the exports from the city. The exports account for 80 percent of the government's revenue. U.S. crude oil prices rose more than $1 to around $107 a barrel after the blast.
The main riverside police base at Basra palace was hit by mortar fire Thursday morning and heavy shooting broke out in a main commercial street in the city, Iraq's second-largest, where the crackdown began on Tuesday.
'The operation is still ongoing and will continue until Basra is free from criminals and outlaws,' Major General Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, head of operations at the Iraqi Defense Ministry, said in Baghdad.
Clashes have spread in the past two days to the southern cities of Kut, Hilla, Diwaniya, Amara and Kerbala, as well as to several Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Basra's police chief survived an assassination attempt overnight. A roadside bomb killed three of his bodyguards.
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