"Martyr Al-Sadr"
From AsiaNews:
Nassiriyah (AsiaNews) - Today, a spokesman from "Martyr Al-Sadr's Office" declared Jihad, saying the holy city of Nassiriyah must not be occupied by foreign troops.This was the first time in 20 years that Shiite religious leaders have declared holy war against any foreign power. Meanwhile, a spokesman from the same office in Baghdad, has asked Al-Mahdi militia forces to start heading for Najaf.
On several occasions Shiite imams have warned about the danger of militarily trespassing on the two holy Shiite towns, which Ayatollah Al-Sistani himself said were "off-limits" to foreign troops.
Moreover, for the first time in many years Friday prayer was cancelled at Imam Hussein's mosque in Karbala "due to the bad situation" and by way a decree issued by Ayatollah Al-Sistani. Meanwhile, 4 people have died and 13 were wounded in violent conflict that broke out in Karabala late yesterday.
This morning heavy fighting erupted in Najaf, where prayer services were also cancelled. Battling were American soldiers and Moqtada Al-Sadr Al-Mahdi militants. Around 7.00 a.m. (Iraqi time) a series of explosions ripped through downtown Najaf while gunfire was heard criss-crossing city streets. ...
Al-Mahdi militia units have taken control of buildings around Najaf's holy sites and hotels where Shiite pilgrims are staying, most of whom are from Iran.
Many witnesses have said that Imam Moqtada Al-Sadr has not set out for Kufa (a town 20 km from Najaf) to attend Friday prayer services, like he has done every week since taking refuge in Najaf.
... "holy city" ... "holy war" ... "holy Shiite towns" ... "holy sites" ...
Everything's holy over there except life itself.
What a religiion. Mosques are ammo dumps, church services are incitement to violence, the head minister calls for blood and vengeance.........
There is no separation between church and state in fundamentalist islam.
Women will make a big difference in Iraq. They may lose the secular freedoms thay enjoyed under Saddam, who for all his despotic behavior allowed the women of Iraq a greater measure of reedom than the women in Saudi Arabia.
Mike H
Yet another press release threatening violence issued by Spanky, Alfalfa, and the rest of the "he man woman haters club."
"a spokesman from the same office in Baghdad, has asked Al-Mahdi militia forces to start heading for Najaf."
Yes, all Shiite militants who wish to board the Allah Express, PLEASE head for Najaf.
The AC-130 crews really appreciate your consideration in not making them hunt your dumb asses down...
US forces really ought to take al Sadr at his word, next time he delivers a sermon claiming that he desires "martyrdom."
On live TV, if possible.
Think of the public service announcement from such video:
"US Air Force F-16: $20 million."
"2,000 pound laser-guided bomb: $54,000."
"All-expense paid trip to meet Allah: Priceless."
Luigi,
Your comment is the funniest truism I've read yet concerning these crazies.
It seems like they're from another planet .....like Bizarroworld, where everything is reversed.
Seems like allah, the great one, is advocating jihad all over the world. Allah must sence this is the time to get us christians, jews, infidels, fat people, gypsies etc. while everyone is crying foul about treatment of prisoners.
Will let's do this for a change, bomb all their sacred places, which would be most everything they stand on, thus they would fall into hell where they belong.
Kudos! Luigi, Lobo91, DC after this grim week, thank you for the great laughs today!
There will be precious few of those when the Great Allah takes over. Talk about the Fun Police, if a politician makes a joke at the expense of the leader (as so many are wont to do right now) it won't be the ol' vaudeville hook, it'll be a dull machete.
What a religiion. Mosques are ammo dumps, church services are incitement to violence, the head minister calls for blood and vengeance.........
Michael,
obviously the prevailing sentiment in iraq among the people (who I assure you are not all fanatical terrorists but husbnads, wifes, sons and daughters like anywhere in the world) is to expell a overwhelming military presence that is perceived as alien and hostile. The bottom line is that the US is a foreign occupation force and there is wide disbelief regarding the reasons of its initial involvement, which are viewed as cynical-opportunistic by many. I'm sure that most people I know would also resist with furor any similar encroachment on their property, territory and pride and hence in my eyes sadr is a resistance leader as much as his methods are despicable-its simply the unpleasent business of war. As for the rabid islamophobia graphically endorsed throughout this site, I'm willing to debate its validity (practically-historically) and by no means assume any high ground of pre-determined knowledge.
I think we should really take off the gloves with this al-sadar guy. We should find and kill terrorists were ever they are found. We can't let this rebellion last forever, it must be put down harshly.
"The bottom line is that the US is a foreign occupation force"
Percieved, yes.
True? No.
Urthshu,
How would you like it if foreign tanks were rolling around in your town shooting up the place...how hard can that be for you to grasp!
Arxos:
"How would you like it if foreign tanks were rolling around in your town shooting up the place...how hard can that be for you to grasp!"
US tanks aren't simply "rolling around shooting up the place" randomly, are they?
If the residents of Najaf were smart, they'd work with Coalition forces to oust al Sadr and his Iranian-backed thugs from their town.
Then NOBODY would be "rolling around shooting up the place."
So the bearded guy with yellow teeth takes his orders from Allah,there's drugs you can for
people that hear voices in their head.
This includes Muhammed who also was told to have sex with a child.
NO ISLAM - KNOW PEACE
America, just like they did in Japan,and Germany, want to get things straightened out in Iraq after getting rid of the corrupt despot Saddama Hussein and his regime and then GET THE HELL OUT "PERIOD". IN FACT THE SOONER THE BETTER.
But the insurgents ,former baathists,Al Sadr, his lunatics, and Al Quaida`s Al Zarqari are slowing us down --as if to stay : stick around, we need you to help make shahids out of us.
If there ever existed a “moderate majority” of Iraqis, in the length of slightly more than a year (though given a good - if not golden - opportunity by the Coalition), they haven’t raised their voices loud enough - much less have they ACTED sufficiently - to set in train any progressive structures or initiatives to realize peace, freedom or prosperity for themselves.
By now, whatever “moderates” there ever were there - through their own tardiness and default - are indubitably greatly diminished in number, as the assorted Islamo-fascists in Iraq, over the 12 month’s period, have reputedly managed to largely re-assert a reign of cold fear over most of the populace, plying their customary intimidation and coecion to restore the sullen “wall of silence” between the Allies and the bulk of the cowed citizenry.
With this challenge so difficult to address and things, accordingly, inexorably deteriorating in Iraq (despite limited advances against the Ayatollah el-Sadr in the Shi’ite south of the country) and politically on the home-front in the USA, Britain, Italy, Poland and Australia, etc, it might soon be necessary for the US and its Allies to make some hard choices.
If Iraq’s left to go on as it is, the best to be hoped for there would be the gruelling continuation of the current - unsatisfactory - status quo, with the Allies painfully compelled to tough out a harsh, cumulative grind of attrition, for years to come.
Should the putative National “Provisional Government” (meant to vest Iraq’s sovereignty from the 30th of July) not be instantaneously up to scratch, then, odds-on, the country will be plunged into total anarchy, murderous vendettas and a mess of bloody civil wars: another - and much bigger - Lebanon. - NOT a good place for the Coalition to be ensnared.
The clock’s ticking away in Iraq. Here’s the more radical option, the TRUE “Shock & Awe”: a select handful of stringently-targeted strikes - with modern mini-nukes. View it as Aversion Therapy, which might be the key to setting Iraq (and the rest of the dar el-Islam) properly, irrevocably on track to the drastic, salutary, humane transformations they sorely need.
Sticking to conventional arms alone, though, to at least slow the potential of a regional descent, to avoid being sucked into the horrors of sustained urban combat in Iraq, the Coalition may have to go as far as to “Groznify” - on the ground, with armour and artillery - one or more towns (some of them Moslem “Holy Cities”), or else it could carpet-bomb them. (- “Horreur! Another Dresden!” the Islamo-fascists and their international claques, so predictably, will cry).
Or the Allies could ignominiously bug out of Iraq, leaving a protracted storm of chaos in their wake - in Iraq and the Mideast and next in North Africa and Central, South and South-East Asia.
Decamping from Iraq, leaving it to its fate, will hence entail the tight containment of the conflicts raging there, to prevent the turmoil contaminating the neighbours (and beyond) - not an end to conflict. Since the adequate sealing of Iraq’s borders probably won’t be feasible, Saudi Arabia would be a prime candidate for infection - it may have to be written off for the moment. However, to minimize such dismissals, Allied bases should be built up urgently in the nearby, pro-Western, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Optimally, the US and its partners, before it’s too late, ought then to secure the oil-fields of southern Iraq and drive into the adjacent ones in Iran - simultaneously destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons plants. If circumstances in Saudi Arabia dictate, striking southward, additional Coalition tanks should roll into its oil-rich Hasa Province, while (again, if it’s necessary) the oil-fields of the UAE are captured. Around these contiguous zones, combined into one tract, should be thrown an impregnable ring of Allied steel, on land and sea, in the air and from up in orbit.
Such bold, geostrategic moves would define the ditching of the dysfunctional, unproductive “hearts’n’minds” phase of present US policy towards the Arab sphere. Granted, this abrupt change would superficially vindicate the Islamo-fascists’, the mad Leftists’/“liberals”’ and their pathetic dupes’ predictable cries of Imperialism.
But - objectively - the mayhem that’s eventually liable to engulf Iraq and next to spill out of it (evidently, whether it’s abandoned by the Coalition or not), MUST be strenuously restricted, for the immediate and future benefit of all.
If the insurrectionists in Iraq - local and foreign, the Jihadi fanatics, Sunni and Shi’ite, the rump-Saddamists, the fascist pan-Arabists, Arab nationalists and Arab Socialists, the tribal warlords, criminal mafias, mercenaries, gangboys, thugs, hooligans, psychopaths, et al - don’t cease their terrorism, IN TIME and honestly (Fat Chance!), there’ll be no alternative fate available for Iraq - plus for some of its adjoining countries - except for some version of total devastation.
How about the hazarding of UN Mideast Special Envoy Laqdar Brahimi’s “plan”? It suggests a “Technocratic” National Provisional Government in Bagdad, inviting in “peace-keepers” (the Coalition having vacated the scene, safely to the margins anyhow) from the armies of the Arab League, to support the slated, transitional Iraqi National “Provisional Government” - whose basic framework’s nowhere agreed, less than two months from its appointed accession-date, July 30.
It’d be a sure bet that the Arab League members’ contingents “assisting” Iraq will incur growing, serious, mutual frictions in the weeks and months of their duties on behalf of the UN, reflecting the endemic feudal malice which divides the Arab world at its every level of society and polity.
Sounds trite, but it’s cold fact - the Arabs’ve all hated, feared and been jealous and suspicious of one another for millennia. As their record unambiguously demonstrates, they’ve been frankly unable to generally break from the worst of their old, venal habits of mind and behaviour, up to and through the severity of the enormous stresses of the 19th and 20th Centuries: there’s not the ghost of a chance of them doing so effectively - at short order - at this perilous stage of the 21st.
Seldom having concurred on anything for years, instead of ever cohering on the vital question of Security for Iraq, they’ll likely end up each backing different, antagonistic Iraqi factions (with a sweeping spectrum of eager “parties”, militias and gangs to choose from).
At first these’ll scrap it out as their various League-members’ proxies, carving out turf - with ample, direct assistance individually from one or other of the Arab corps in Iraq (initially, affording the Members some “plausible deniability”, but increasingly, inevitably, arriving in an ugly, nasty, lethal melée).
In parallel - in a monumental exercise in futility - the UN-favoured “Technocrats” running the mooted Iraqi “Provisional Government” (which the Arabs would all be publicly pretending to stand in harmony behind, as their bitter, internecine fighting mounts in the casbahs) - are to be busy preparing democratic, national elections (scheduled for January ’05), supposed to lead from their limited, interim rule into a new, fully independent Government in Iraq.
Mr Brahimi’s scheme virtually guarantees that any peace and properly democratic elections in Iraq will be a very long way off: specially - dementedly - with the Arab League as the chief patron. Having its men and those of the Organization of Islamic Conferences and their third-world cronies “guarding”, “facilitating” and making a hefty contribution to the “guidance” and “supervision”, “consulting” and “auditing”, of the show, would be a patent, tragic absurdity.
What do they know about peace and democracy - except for possessing an extreme, instinctive expertise in dodging them in the dar el-Islam? Notwithstanding, to have the Arab League - vitally, plus Iran - heavily embroiled in major clashes in Iraq, jostling, squabbling, spitting, grappling, battling and draining themselves into its sands, might be a satisfactory means of neutralizing much of the contemporary energy and menace of Islamo-fascism.
In all of this, the problem of strict and vigilant confinement of the certain, dire conflagration to Iraq and its closest environs (should it spread) as narrowly as possible, till it’s extirpated itself, burnt itself out - and it could take decades - remains an item of the highest priority.
To Islamists that post here.
You do realize the FBI and CIA are on to you right?
You do realize just because we are a kind people doesn't mean that we won't wipe you all out if we have to. Just ask the Germans, Japanese etc.
Where are all the terror supporters that usually come here to post their trash? What, none of you want to come on and tell us how your heros are gonna kidnap, and decapitate more innocent people?
To behead someone, then scream "God is great" is blasphemy at its worst. Is this really what Muslims want to be associated with? I doubt that every Muslim on earth wants this type of action to be their calling card.
Muslims, take this chance to stamp out the murderous, radical faction of Islam. That'd be nice.
Occupation. Hmmm. I had a nightmare in which the USA lived under a Sodom-Insane type. A coalition of decent countries (Canada? UK? South Korea? Federal Germany?) invaded, throwing the bum out. I think, after collecting the remains of relatives from mass gaves containing more bodies than were pulled out from under the rubble and giving proper burial, I'd probably tell the tank crews to come by for a cup of tea when they were off duty; and I'd curse the overthrown dictator, his party, and supporters for leaving most of us without the wherewithal to give the invaders barbecued mutton. And if the KKK organized a resistance, I'd tell them to get their filthy, bigoted hands off of my religion.