More trouble ahead. "Are Sadr militias rearming in Iraq's south?" by Jane Arraf for the Christian Science Monitor, May 12:
Baghdad - A senior US general said forces loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are rising again in Iraq's south, engaging in intimidation, extortion, and political violence as politicians in Baghdad continue to negotiate over forming a government two months after national elections.
Maj. Gen. Vincent Brooks, in charge of US forces in nine southern provinces, said he has not ruled out involvement by Sadrist paramilitaries or splinter groups in a string of deadly attacks Monday across the south.
"There's evidence in the past that they're not at all reticent to intimidate and to murder their fellow Shiite citizens, so I do not exclude them," said Brooks, commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division, in a telephone interview from Basra.
The violence, which killed 67 Iraqis and wounded almost 300 in 10 separate attacks across the south, included an attack on an imam who has spoken out against the militias and the bombing of a mosque.
It will likely be unclear for some time who was behind the attacks - the deadliest in Iraq this year. But the reactivation of the Sadr militia known as the Jaish al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) and other Shiite militias - not yet seen in Baghdad - would be a key warning sign of a resurgence of sectarian violence. [...]
"We have seen some intimidation being done by local parties like the Sadrists engaging in old-fashioned methods like intimidation and extortion, particularly against police and police chiefs throughout the provinces," said Brooks.
Brooks said in the past three weeks the provincial police chiefs of Maysan, Dhikkar, Diwayniya and Najaf have either been demoted or replaced, with officials who have been historically friendly to Sadr interests put in charge.
The move could mean rising tension between the national security forces in the Iraqi Army and police chiefs more influenced by provincial Shiite politics.
Although Al Qaeda in Iraq was blamed by the Iraqi government for Monday's violence, the organization has traditionally had little presence in the overwhelmingly Shiite south, where most attacks have been linked to power struggles between competing Shiite parties - some of them linked to Iran. US officials believe attacks on citizens have been designed to show that government security forces cannot maintain security.
"The location, the timing, and the type of target says to me it is political opportunism," Brooks said of Monday's attacks....
How I miss the good old days of the Iran-Iraq ... "My Allah is bigger than your Allah" festivities of the '80's. sigh.....
Regardless of the fluidity of today's situation, it's tomorrow that Al Sadr is banking on. He is busy establishing his religious bonafides in Iran right now, studying in Qom to become an Ayatollah and positing himself to become Iraq's future Khomeini.
Maj. Gen. Vincent Brooks, in charge of US forces in nine southern provinces...
Why are we in Iraq in the first place, is what I wonder. Afhan too.
*** 9:111 ***
Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The best possible result isn't peace with these people, it's chaos.
A good and bloody 30 yr battle between Shia and Sunni wouldn't be unwelcome. When they're concerned with one another they can't focus on us. Maybe by then we'll have figured out to deal with Moslems.
wonder if obama will go by what he said earlier and let those pesky iraqi take care of their own country. his nutroots must be just going bonkers with his stance now in iraq.
Monkey Boy and his evil minions are at work again.
Alarmed Pig Farmer - A good and bloody 30 yr battle between Shia and Sunni wouldn't be unwelcome.
Why would you say something like that. I am Shia and I certainly would not welcome such a thing.
See this is the difference between muslims and kaffir.
Some remote muslim in a remote ME village may kill his daughter in an honour killing and the kaffir goes mental on one death and quickly labels ALL muslims as barbarians.
But here you (and I'd wager every kaffir) is happy to see millions of muslims killed in a shis/sunni war.
Can you see the comparison here - 1 death versus over a million and yet WE are the barbarians. Surely you gest!
"kaffir goes mental over one death "..
One death ? What newspaper do you read ?
Surely you gest !
What's that? No Westerners involved muslim on muslim violence......iran involved in extremist operations in Iraq? Quick someone tell oba-mao and his minions 'cause I don't think they know about it!!
Then again with the cadre of craven apologists he has assembled they have probably already blamed ALL of this on America anyway, right?
God Bless America and Israel
Ali you are being disingenuous. And if hoping that two competing groups of people who both want to topple the "great Satan" (read "kill us!!") kill each other off some before they turn their attention on us makes me a barbarian in your eyes, I am prepared to live with that.
GBAI
Ali you are being disingenuous. If hoping that two competing groups of people who both want to topple the "great Satan" (read "kill us!!") kill each other off some before they turn their attention on us makes me a barbarian in your eyes, I am prepared to live with that.
GBAI
Why would you say something like that. I am Shia and I certainly would not welcome such a thing.
I say that, as heartless as it is, cuz Moslems are aggressors, always hostile. And Moslems have got to the point where they are expensive and dangerous. Bettter to work your magic on each other, that way we can live in peace.
Alarmed Pig Farmer - Moslems have got to the point where they are expensive and dangerous.
I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I guess you are talking about your secret services having to track say upto 1000 extremists to see if they get upto no good.
Being throughly peace loving and very moderate I too have no time for these extremists - they hurt me MORE than they hurt you.
You only get hit in the $ region, but when you don't do your job properly - and they are successful, I get hit because everybody all of a sudden hates me and wants to restricts my movements.
This is why I think it could be deliberate policy of your CIA services to allow some of these attacks to succeed to put pressure on us.
It could even be that the CIA let 9/11 slide - only to realise that it was slightly bigger than they throught at 1st.
But the bottom line is this. Why should I suffer if you can't/won't do your job right?
Islam has killed over 270 million human beings over the past 1400 years. So is it fair for us Islamophobes to conclude that the practice of Islam is violent and it's practitioners violent as well?
Quiz question - how many deadly Islamic attacks have occurred since 9/11?
"Why should I suffer if you can't/won't do your job right?"
Boo-Hoo! Let me call you a wambulance ...
Hey if you're so sick 'n tired of these "extremists" then stop your whining and join the fight against THEM -- not us!
Your personal suffering is the least of our worries, big baby. Grow a pair and stop your whining and get to work.
There are so many proactive things that you can do as a muslim to produce change, but will you? Huh? Targetting posters here will not produce diddly-squat towards meaningful change. Attend your local mosque and then target them.
I know, I know, I am talking to a wall ...
sigh.
"Quiz question - how many deadly Islamic attacks have occurred since 9/11?"
'DefenderOfIslam' probably knows the answer ...
since he's a wealth of information.
"You only get hit in the $ region, but when you don't do your job properly - and they are successful, I get hit because everybody all of a sudden hates me and wants to restricts my movements.
But the bottom line is this. Why should I suffer if you can't/won't do your job right?"
I like to give my view on this; for the police and intelligence services; we only can ask them to do their best, but it is well possible that due to many factors the terrorists still get, say, 1 in a 100 hits through.
And the obstructing factors for the security services might well be caused by non-cooperation of Muslims with them or even active support by Muslims of Jihadists, due to a large percentage of them who sympathise more with the Jihadists than the security-services.
But about your remark that you will suffer because you'll be hated and restricted in your movements. You here pose as if the terrorists that the failing security services can't stop causing casualties and damage, are somehow people who share a RACE with you, something they and you were born with, over which you have no control, for or against which you have no choice.
But you do have a choice, you did choose for Islam. And why? Was it because of love of parents and community? Or out of fear for them to get violent if you didn't? That would be bad reasons, not your inevitable fate.
But for whatever reason you chose to follow Islam, you are now facing the consequences of that.
And it is because Islam is now soooo well known to a group of Islam-critics, including many ex-Muslims. Who are absolutely already or soon will be every bit as knowledgeable about Islam as the best Islamic Islam-experts.
And they are convinced and tell the world, with huge knowledge and sound logical arguments, that: Islam is at least in part ANTI-DEMOCRATIC. And I mean here anti-many essential Democratic laws and values, and anti Democratic constitutions in part.
And guess what; the overwhelming majority of Western citizens still deeply loves and wants to continue with these essential Democratic laws and values. And there you are, a member of a group, most loyal to its'own people, who very possibly want to overthrow Democracy and moreover a group of which powerful members are oppressing people who also long to have democratic rights in Islamic countries.
Now how can Democratic people who realise this deeply ever like you, trust you blindly, let you go wherever you want to go without checking you?
It's your own responsibility, you should either apostasize or try to form a sort of Democratic Islam if you think it's possible. And if you do not think that, why don't you Muslims inform us Democrats outright about your supremacist "theocratic" preferences?
"You only get hit in the $ region but when you don't do your job...everybody all of a sudden hates me and wants to restrict my movements."
Is that right? Why don't you lay that sob-story on the survivors of those murdered by muslim-attacks? I'm sure they'll feel your pain, LOL! And BTW, it's YOUR job to clean-up your own house, not ours. We're just doing our best to defend ourselves from your primitive little "religion-of-peace."
"This is why I think it could be deliberate policy of your CIA services to allow some of these attacks to succeed to put pressure on us."
What if what you're saying is true? Does that change who's DOING THE ATTACKS? Duh! Sorry, that dog won't hunt, either. Actually, it's insultingly stupid!
Whatever "suffering" you endure is by your own choice. And I guarantee you it's going to get worse--lots worse--because your scum-bag islamic brothers and sisters will continue to attack us. They're muslims--it's what they do! Just what pedophile Mo told them (and you) to do!
If you're so "peace-loving and very moderate," then doesn't that say you're not a "pious muslim?" You need to get in-touch with your "inner jihad!" Or...you could choose to lose your death-cult and join the human race! It's your choice, after all, isn't it? Well, is it or not?
"...forces loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are rising again in Iraq's south, engaging in intimidation, extortion, and political violence..."
Just trying to show they're good and faithful Shi'a merely engaged in implementing the party platform.
I agree with Eastview, these Moslems are just doing what moslems do.
Aadeesh Ali, one of the problems we have with peaceful Muslims like you aver to be is that you aren't taking out the trash and and cleaning up your own Islamic house, so to speak, but instead you harbor and coddle the terrorists residing among you. YOU should be taking the lead in tracking down and eliminating those within Islam you claim are giving it a bad name. We're getting tired of hearing the whines that "it's not me, it's my cousin from Ohio" excuses. Why aren't you doing your own investigative work to track down and bring to justice these terrorists? Instead, you leave it up to us to do your dirty work, and then complain about it when we do?
This posting may seem at first to be offtopic, but it is not.
Just read through it, slowly and attentively.
"The Kurdish man working on the Turkish Bible Society’s Kurdish Bible translation project did not become a Bible-believing Christian until after he had been engaged to do the work.
"With hindsight, though, he can say that by the time he started the work, his journey was already under way.
"A friend who worked for the Bible Society knew of his language abilities and suggested him for the position of translator. He worked as a volunteer for a while before a more formal arrangement was made. That was in 1994.
"Born into an educated family, he became politically aware at an early age.
“I never believed in the Muslim religion when I was a student in high school,” he recalls. “I actually hated being Muslim.”
'After taking a degree in Philosophy, he went on to study for a doctorate in International Relations.
'At the time of joining the Bible Society, he was working on his thesis, which he completed in 2000.
'His career prior to coming to the Turkish Bible Society had been a mixed one.
'While studying for his Philosophy degree, he had a job in a hotel. And later, while researching and writing about the Kurdish people, he opened his own restaurant in Istanbul.
'*Somewhat provocatively, however, he gave the restaurant a Kurdish name* {my emphasis - dda} and the project was a failure.
' It was not the only time his political outlook has brought him misfortune: later, a newspaper article he wrote in which he referred to the Kurdish minority cost him his job as a university teacher.
'Although his intellectual and political development began at an early age, his spiritual shaping took place more recently.
'Shortly before he was offered the opportunity to work on the Kurdish Bible, an incident occurred which, though it didn’t seem significant at the time, seems now to suggest the presence of God’s hand on his life.
“I was on holiday in Izmit,” he says. “I went to a district called Selçuk, formerly a Christian area where there is a church called Mother Mary Church.
“I went into this church and for the first time in my life, I can say, I prayed. And then after a few days, my friend – the one who was working in the Bible Society – phoned me and said, ‘There is a translation job. Would you like to help with the work?’ I have asked myself many times if the phone call was the result of the prayer.”
'He adds, somewhat mysteriously, that he had already thought of translating part of the Bible into Kurdish when the offer came his way. “I had the idea before I knew about the Bible Society – maybe it was God’s plan,” he laughs.
'By the time he was engaged on the project he was of the firm opinion that the Kurds would benefit greatly from having the Bible in their own language.
'As he became immersed in reading and translating the New Testament, he found that he was being deeply affected by it.
'**He discovered that Christianity’s culture was quite different from that of Islam. Certain Bible teachings highlighted the differences strikingly. “It totally changed me to deal with how you are taught to forgive people, to love people and live with them in peace. The Bible says ‘Love your enemies and your neighbours’ and ‘Treat your neighbour as you would like to be treated.’ This affected me.”** - {my emphasis - dda}
'From then on, while still a Kurdish intellectual, “In my heart,” he says, “I believed in Jesus.”
*“When I recognised the Bible, I learned to be flexible… to listen to people… to forgive them… and to be more patient. For example, if you are among Muslims, you would always fight.* {my emphasis - dda} I don’t want to fight; I always wanted to convince people, to argue with them. … to understand them.”
'The year after he became a translator he undertook a short course in Christian theology.
'Since giving his life to Jesus Christ, he has been a vocal advocate of the Christian faith.
“I have spoken with hundreds – maybe thousands – of people on the issue of being Christians and Muslims,” he says.
“And I am always supporting the totally different Christian culture.
“Maybe I am like a missionary, you could say – like 10 missionaries!”
(from the United Bible Societies' World Report, 399/13 - February 1st 2006.
Did everyone notice those two very, very telling paragraphs?
#1. 'He [Kurd, in Turkey, raised nominal Muslim] discovered that Christianity’s culture was quite different from that of Islam. Certain Bible teachings highlighted the differences strikingly.
“It totally changed me to deal with how you are taught to forgive people, to love people and live with them in peace.
The Bible says ‘Love your enemies and your neighbours’ and ‘Treat your neighbour as you would like to be treated.’ This affected me.
#2: 'When I recognised the Bible, I learned to be flexible… to listen to people… to forgive them… and to be more patient. For example, if you are among Muslims, you would always fight.* I don’t want to fight; I always wanted to convince people, to argue with them. … to understand them.”
Now let's focus on that very telling line - remembering too, that the speaker was, by his own account, a very nominal Muslim, reared in Turkey - so he has got to be talking about the society *he* experienced; not a backblocks war-zone, but a superficially westernised milieu.
"If you are among Muslims, you would always fight".
As the Muslims of Mesopotamia, aka Iraq, are demonstrating, over and over and over again.
As another poster observed above: the article merely shows us Muslims doing what Muslims do.
Let's go back and read a few choice passages from the article:
"...forces loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are rising again in Iraq's south, engaging in intimidation, extortion, and political violence as politicians in Baghdad continue to negotiate over forming a government".
"they're not at all reticent to intimidate and to murder their fellow Shiite citizens"
"power struggles between competing Shiite parties".
Now, let's hear Sir Winston Churchill, 1922, writing to Lloyd George, then the British Prime Minister, on the futility of what the British were attempting to achieve in Mesopotamia:
"At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an
ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having."
And, finally, let's reread what Sir Winston Churchill said about the character of an ethnically-non-Arab Muslim population far to the east of Iraq, namely, what is now Afghanistan and the NorthWest Frontier province of Pakistan:
"Except at the times of sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land. Tribe wars with tribe. The people of one valley fight with those of the next. To the quarrels of communities are added the combats of individuals. Khan assails khan, each supported by his retainers.
"Every tribesman has a blood feud with his neighbor.
"Every man's hand is against the other, and all against the stranger {read: against the non-Muslim - dda}....
[My note - sounds *exactly* like Iraq today - dda].
"Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour.
'That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword--the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men--stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism...
'in these valleys the warlike nature of the people and their hatred of control, arrest the further progress of development.
'We have watched a man, able, thrifty, brave, fighting his way to power, absorbing, amalgamating, laying the foundations of a more complex and interdependent state of society. He has so far succeeded.
'But his success is now his ruin. A combination is formed against him. The surrounding chiefs and their adherents are assisted by the village populations. The ambitious Pathan, oppressed by numbers, is destroyed.
'The victors quarrel over the spoil, and the story closes, as it began, in bloodshed and strife."...
'Their system of ethics, *which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices* {hmmm - and we who have learned about Mohammed the Warlord and the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, and about taqiyya, know that this 'system of ethics' is not peculiar to the Pathan, but is hardwired into Islam and so typifies every Muslim society - dda}, has produced a code of honour (sic: dda} so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind.
'I have been told that if a white man could grasp it fully, and were to understand their mental impulses--if he knew, when it was their honour to stand by him, and when it was their honour to betray him; when they were bound to protect and when to kill him--he might, by judging his times and opportunities, pass safely from one end of the mountains to the other.
'But a civilised European is as little able to accomplish this, as to appreciate the feelings of those strange creatures, which, when a drop of water is examined under a microscope, are revealed amiably gobbling each other up, and being themselves complacently devoured."...
"Their wives and their womenkind generally, have no position but that of animals. They are freely bought and sold, and are not infrequently bartered for rifles.
"Truth is unknown among them."..
"Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood--"Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs," --and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur," and no man's wife or daughter is safe from them.
"Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley's plays, "they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters." They are "safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach."...
"It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population.
"Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination.
"But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance.
"It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness.
"In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis--as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such.
"While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy
of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting." END QUOTE
-from Sir Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, chapter 1, 'The Theatre of War'.
Perhaps if every western politician and every general had carefully examined what happened in Iraq, that 'ungrateful volcano', in the 1920s and 1930s, and read those passages of 'The Malakand Field Force' in the 1980s or 1990s, and taken them seriously as an intelligent layman's description of what Islam does to human beings - to any human beings, anywhere - the current expedition in Iraq might never have been undertaken, and certainly no-one would have entertained any foolish ideas of somehow creating a stable, peaceful civil society out of a population suffused with Islam. The West might, for its own reasons, have bombed certain sites in Iraq to smithereens; but that would have been all.
Sorry. That final paragraph of my posting above, is a bit unclear. Here's a revised version.
"Perhaps if, in the 1980s and 1990s and in 2001-2002, every western politician and every general had carefully examined what happened in Iraq, that 'ungrateful volcano', in the 1920s and 1930s, and read those passages of 'The Malakand Field Force', and taken them seriously as an intelligent layman's description of what Islam does to human beings - to any human beings, anywhere - the current expedition in Iraq might never have been undertaken, and certainly no-one would have entertained any foolish ideas of somehow creating a stable, peaceful civil society out of a population suffused with Islam. The West might, for its own reasons, have bombed certain sites in Iraq to smithereens; but that would have been all."
Aadeesh Ali, I love the casual way you throw around the insulting epithet 'kafir' as it should mean nothing to us.
You'd never say that to my face.
Aadeesh Ali :Some remote muslim in a remote ME village may kill his daughter in an honour killing and the kaffir goes mental on one death and quickly labels ALL muslims as barbarians.
Yeah, but that's not what's happening, is it?
Aadeesh Ali : But here you (and I'd wager every kaffir) is happy to see millions of muslims killed in a shis/sunni war.
I would be but I'm a very angry, violent, unforgiving 'kafir'.
Aadeesh Ali Can you see the comparison here - 1 death versus over a million and yet WE are the barbarians. Surely you gest!
Your grasp of simple arithmetic is wildly off. It isn't ONE death that we're appalled by. This is happening all the time because you have 'culturalized' your psychotic misogynistic behavior to the point where you don't even know what you're doing is wrong.
Nice reworking of the numbers. Are you an accountant?
The demise of the Free World has begun. Fourteen hundred years ago Mohammed created his new ideology, Islam, which was rejected by both Christian and Jew of the age. From that day forward, brainwashed and intimidated Muslim have been led to believe it's their duty to annihilate the Jew first then the rest of humanity that does not join their cause and become one of them. The Free World has no choice but to allow it to happen while our liberal media and legal system ignore the fact that our fight for survival is with a fanatical ideology not a religion much the same, no, exactly the same as Nazism with one major difference, every Mosque houses an Imam who cast the same spell over it's people as Hitler did over Germany in WW II and they're every where. Now they want to arrogantly flaunt yet another one right in the face of the bastions of Freedom and Prosperity they tried to destroy on 9/11/2001 in lower Manhattan.
They have us where they want us especially now that they have one of their own illegally leading our country i.e. leading our country straight to the pits of Hell where Mohammed awaits with a smile on his face. Osama bin Laden may have been right when he mused that no matter who the world leaders are, the movement has begun and there's no stopping it now. Have I told you about God and His Son Jesus? Our Founding Fathers knew them. While we're preoccupied with Global Warming, starving humanity, Peak Oil, MO_BamaCare or extreme taxation, health and justice for all, Islam attacks our house like termites silently destroying the very foundation on which our Nation was built. Beware, MO_Bama is the queen termite infecting the world from the very seat of Power that has rescued and protected so many from the wrath of the likes of Mohammed and Hitler for over 200 years. At any moment, 1000 or more weapons of mass destruction could blow them self up in preselected crowded areas of the world to do what terrorist do, terrorize. Mohammed used the same strategy 1400 years ago and it continues today. Are you ready?
"Some remote muslim in a remote ME village may kill his daughter in an honour killing and the kaffir goes mental on one death and quickly labels ALL muslims as barbarians. "
Hey Ali - please peddle your insults against barbarians somewhere else....
Yes, I have always thought that, too.