One of Ours

...I’ve been listening to some perspectives about this incident and in many instances, I found these perspectives echoic of the terrorists' words, especially when someone says “see, the GC and the Iraqis cannot even protect their highest officials. How can we expect them to be able to protect the lives of ordinary Iraqis and manage the affairs of a whole country next July?”

This is a direct call for delaying the political process in this country. And who’s interested in doing so?! I guess this has become obvious for us a long time ago.

We have a critical security situation, that’s right and we need to deal with the defects quickly. But no matter what precautions we take, we cannot be a 100% sure that we can protect every single person, including our leaders and the higher officials who make favorite targets for the terrorists but we still can make their attempts go in vain by making our leadership *replaceable*. This idea may seem odd or even a little bit cruel but I can give some further explanations; the terrorists think in the same way their dictator-masters do. They believe that every nation has “and should have” one strong man to lead her and if it happened one day that the nation “lost” this strong man (the Khalifa, in OBL's followers' minds), she will certainly be doomed. The main point that they fail to capture, is that this idea applies only to totalitarian regimes and does not apply to democracies. This doesn't mean, at all, that we don't respect our leaders or that we do not appreciate their services. We can take a good example from the history of the USA; when president JFK was assassinated (America was one of the two super powers in the world at that time), the Americans were deeply saddened by the loss of such a great leader but they did not stop at that point. They moved on and kept their determination to overcome the loss and that’s why America became the only super power in the world in less than 30 years from that tragic incident. That's why we'll keep moving forwards because we're building a model for democracy here, we've sacrificed a lot in the last decades and we're ready to give more if needed but we're not giving up.

Are we sad? Yes of course, but we’re absolutely not discouraged because we know our enemies and we know their ways and we decided to go in this battle to the end. They think they can force us to give up but they’re totally mistaken. I’ve tasted freedom, my friends and I’d rather die fighting to preserve my freedom before I find myself trapped in another nightmare of blood and oppression.

SCOTTISH troops fixed bayonets and fought hand to hand with a Shi’ite militia in southern Iraq in one of their fiercest clashes since the war was declared more than a year ago...

Soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders mounted what were described as "classic infantry assaults" on firing and mortar positions held by more than 100 fighters loyal to the outlawed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr...

At least 20 men from al-Sadr’s army were believed killed in more than three hours of fighting - the highest toll reported in any single incident involving British forces in the past 12 months.

Nine fighters were captured and three British soldiers injured, none seriously.

"It was very bloody and it was difficult to count all their dead," one source was quoted as saying. "There were bodies floating in the river."

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were drawn into the fighting when soldiers in two Land-Rovers were ambushed on Friday afternoon about 15 miles east of the city of Amara. The soldiers escaped, only to be ambushed a second time by a larger group of militia, armed with machine-guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Reinforcements were summoned from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment at a base nearby. "There was some pretty fierce hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets fixed," the source added. "There were some classic assaults on mortar positions held by the al-Sadr forces."

A former Saddam Hussein-era general appointed by the Americans to lead an Iraqi security force in the rebellious Sunni stronghold of Fallujah urged tribal elders and sheiks Sunday to support U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.

Retired [Baathist Republican Guard] Maj. Gen. Mohammed Abdul-Latif rose to prominence after nearly monthlong battles last month between the Marines monthlong battles in April between the Marines and insurgents hunkered down in Fallujah's neighborhoods.

"We can make them [Americans] use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it's your choice," Latif told a gathering of more than 40 sheiks, city council members and imams in an eastern Fallujah suburb.

[...]

Latif, speaking in Arabic to the sheiks, defended the Marines and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

"They were brought here by the acts of one coward who was hunted out of a rathole — Saddam — who disgraced us all," Latif said. "Let us tell our children that these men [U.S. troops] came here to protect us."

"As President Bush said, they did not come here to occupy our land but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay ten years and more by keeping fighting."

[...]

Latif also told the insurgents to "stop doing stupid things."

"Those bullets that are fired will not get the Americans out, let them finish their job here so that they can return to their country," Latif said.

"Our country is precious, stop allowing the bad guys to come from outside Iraq to destroy our country."...

A suicide car bomber assassinated the current president of the Interim Governing Council on Monday as he was waiting at a checkpoint outside the Green Zone or the HQ of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem, had been a leader of the Shiite al-Dawa Party in the southern city of Basra...

[...]

...Ahmad Chalabi hinted darkly that it was the work of ex-Baathists based in Fallujah, and that, moreover, it was the Americans' decision not to finish off the insurgents in Fallujah that allowed this bombing to happen.

[...]

Ghazi al-Yawer, a tribal leader from the Sunni heartland, was selected to succeed Saleem. IGC member Salama al-Khufaji suggested that the bombing had been intended to foment sectarian violence.

Another bombing in Baghdad near US troops on Saturday had involved the use of sarin gas. Two US soldiers suffered slight reactions to the gas...The insurgents who used it may not even have known what it was. (It was not marked). A couple left-over stray such shells does not prove that there were WMD in Iraq in any signifcant [sic] sense...