From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents in Iraq struck again on Saturday, whisking away an Iraqi government official at gunpoint and killing at least 11 people in various bombings and ambushes, including one that again targeted foreign diplomats.Meanwhile, Iraq government officials worked furiously on a draft of a new constitution. Officials have by Monday to determine whether they need a six-month delay or will have the document completed by an August 15 deadline.
The most dramatic strike Saturday took place near the Iraqi National Theater, where people from the nation's civil community institutions were developing demands for the committee writing the constitution.
A suicide car bomb killed six people, including three police officers, and wounded 26 others.
In the kidnapping, gunmen in western Baghdad abducted Eman Naji Abdul Razaq, the Health Ministry's director general of the projects department. Four gunmen in two cars stormed Razaq's home in the Mansour neighborhood and took her during the early afternoon.
Continuing a trend of targeting foreign officials, insurgents attacked a British Embassy convoy with a roadside bomb. Two private security guards were killed and two children were wounded, the British Home Office said...
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Muslims killing Muslims.
Helping to clean up their own mess.
Sounds good to me.
The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers.
Of course, foreign jihadis and suicide bombers are dying also.
Muslims killing Muslims.
Sunnis killing Shia.
Shia killing Sunnis, etc.
Helping to clean up their own mess.
Farouk:
I don't think all the bloodshed is on sectarian lines. It's primarily Sunni jihaddists on anyone cooperating with the infidels, isn't it?
For the most part yes, except when the Shi'a Badr Brigade retaliated against Sunni Scholars/Clerics.
Ayatohall al Sistani, issued a fatwa of calm for the Shi'a population, he knows that the Sunni's (Ba'athists, Wahhabiyyah Foreign fighers, etc) wish to use terrorism to drive out the Americans and Brits so they can stage a coup and reclaim power.
Problem for us is there is no difference between the two (Sunni and Shi'a) and unlike many who look on the Kurds as victims of ARab persecution (which they are) one must remember the long, and current history of Kurdish Muslims, especially persecuting Christians and Jews. the famous Salah al Deen (Saladin) was a Kurd, the Kurds helped the Turks in the Armenian Genocide, and Kurdish Muslims have a history of persecuting Assyrian Christians, to the present.
From the aspect of a western Shari'a is Shari'a, doesn't matter whether it is Sunni or Shi'a, in fact there isn't much difference between Shi'a Shari'a and Wahhabi Shari'a, except that in Iran women can vote and drive, and have a few more occupations open to them, but not many.
From the aspect of doing business, and from the perspective of a businessman, Shi'a Iraq is preferable to Sunni Iraq, because Shi'a is centralized authority, whereas Sunni authority is anarchial and split amongst the likes of the Association of Muslm Scholars, which inevitably leads to the rise of the dictator or Tribal sheikh (be it a Gen Qassim, a Nasser, the Saudi Royals, the Alawites of Syria, or the Emirs of Kuwait and the Gulf coast.
Iran on the other hand has a centralized governmental structure and a centralized chain of command, ruled over by the Revolutionary Council (the parent of Iraq's SCIRI), with final say in the hands of Ayatollah Khameini.
No chance of such a structure in Iraq.
From a business point of view, then a Shi'a Iraq is preferable, to an anarchial Iraq, and that's probably one of the reasons that the Sunni's are spilling blood, they will lose power to the majority who have never had any power, nor a seat at the table in Iraq, never, ever.
From my POV, I would like to see the Sunni and Shi'a engaged in an all out sectarian civil war, but despite the fact that the Shi'a have the soldiers (majority) I'm positive at this time that the Sunni's would win, because the Sunni's know where all of the munitions and weapons are buried, and it is the Sunni's who have the experience in organization, training, military and civil, because it was the Sunni's who were the backbone of Saddams Mukhbarat, Republican Guard, Army Command and who pulled the triggers on the Shi'a whose bodies fill the mass graves of al Hilah, Babylon and Najaf.
The Shi'as heretofore disenfranchised and virtually ignorant of administration, organization, military and police matters, weapons, and certainly not privvy to where all of those bombs and artillery shells are buried that are used as IED's, have a long way to go, to be able to stand up the Sunni.
And the purpose of our presence is to give them time to learn, train and organize an army and police.
But that army and police will be, as the Iranian army is, hostile to the US.. I guarantee it.