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"...even the wicked get worse than they deserve." - Willa Cather, One of Ours

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Kufa Ceasefire Shattered

ABC
and Shi'ite Leader: Mehdi Army 'Infiltrated by Ba'athists'
...Sadr’s fighters fired mortars and other artillery from the wall of a mosque at US positions on the bridge.

[...]

On Friday, four Iraqis were killed and 13 others and two US soldiers were wounded in fighting in Kufa on the main day of rest in Iraq. Both Sadr aides and US forces accused each other of violating the truce.

In Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy operations director, also said 16 mortar rounds were fired at a US base close to neighboring Najaf.

“These would appear to be violations of the agreement that he signed his name to,” Brig Gen Kimmitt said in reference to Sadr.

“It could take a couple of days before the true ceasefire that he offered holds, but we will wait and see and we will continue to respond as and when necessary,” he added.

[...]

But in an interview with Qatar’s Al Jazeera television late Friday, Sadr said peace would only be possible when foreign forces left Iraq.

"We are not a negligible quantity, neither in terms of numbers nor in terms of equipment. No matter how numerous the enemies are, we will stand fast in the face of this crusader offensive against Islam and we will defend these [Shiite Muslim] holy places until the last drop of our blood," he said.
Meanwhile, The Australian reported this gem: Shi'ite Leader: Mehdi Army 'Infiltrated by Ba'athists':
The militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is led by former loyalists of ousted president Saddam Hussein and "terrorists", a spokesman for one of Iraq's main Shi'ite parties said today.

"The leadership of the Mehdi Army has been infiltrated by Baathists and terrorists and we have a list of their names," Sheikh Qassem al-Hashimi, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told reporters.

"This group planned the assassination attempt against Sayed (honorific) Saddredin al-Kubbanji yesterday and it is the same group that killed Sayed Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim and Sayed Abdul Majid al-Khoei."

Kubbanji, the Najaf-based representative of SCIRI, escaped unscathed an attempt on his life yesterday as he finished giving the weekly sermon at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf.

Hakim, a founder of SCIRI and its former leader, was killed in a massive car bomb attack at the shrine in August while Khoei, a moderate and prominent cleric, was stabbed to death near the shrine in April 2003...
Muqtada has really screwed up this time.

The deal Sistani negotiated for him was a pretty good deal for his part. By renegging on the deal (mostly for ego reasons, I believe) he has doomed himself.

Now the senior Shia leadership is setting him up as a Baathist spy. This kind of accusation will substantially undercut his political (and military) support, and leave him vulnerable to being killed by his own people.

Muqty old son, your days are numbered.

CSPAN-Iraq

Roger L. Simon
...Let's take the biased reporters out of the equation (or at least lessen their importance). Why don't we put up some money and internationalize what is now our greatest media asset, CSPAN? And there's an obvious source for the cash -- NPR and PBS. In a democratic society, they have no business in the news business. Impartiality is impossible in reporting and the government (no matter which way it leans) should be excluded from it. Wasn't it Susan Sontag who said she was "Against Interpretation." Well, in this case I agree with her.
I would settle for a CSPAN-Iraq. This kind of channel would have terrific ratings in the Islamic world. Doing this is the best way to make the political process in Iraq transparent, and build public confidence in a new democratic Iraq.

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