Arrest Warrant Issued for Moqtada al Sadr

04/05/04 | Dan Senor

[vbmoneyspender]

More to follow

[HiJinx]

Ping, FRiend....

The guy you've been keeping an eye on now has numbered days.

[epluribus_2]

I think this is VERY good news for our pal - Al Sistani. Remember he is the guy with a bigger bunch of shiipsychos than Sadr and has been preaching against the new constitution for a while. This whole episode against Sadr may be a kick in the groin to the Iranian element in Iraq and a gift to Sistani to keep his folks in line until the handover. Cellophane Hat?

[WOSG]

Fallujah is a coincidence but the Shiite is hitting the fan bigtime because these guys have only until June before they are 'locked out' of power in the new Iraq.

This is like a fever that breaks. Get through this and we will have 'healed' Iraq.

The new Iraq train was leaving the station and Sadr had his irrelevent following of a few thousand fanatics and maybe 10x more supporters that were looking more and more kooky and left behind ... most Shiites hate him and ignore him for the more popular and moderate (in Iraqi terms) Sistani.

Sadr had to create a provocation or he'd be a has-been.

So he made his choice. To stand up to the US and provoke us. I'm glad we are making ours, to roll him up. Arrest and jail for about 6 months will be enough to side-line him for now.

[CedarDave]

The warrant should come AFTER our troops riddled him with bullets!!

True. Hopefully his followers will put up armed resistance. If he goes to jail alive, his followers will endlessly demonstrate to demand his release. In this case a dead martyr is better than a live radical cleric.

[johnfrink]

Sadr really should have been, er, "talked to" several months ago. I heard him speak (well, a translation, anyway) back in October or so, and it was obvious that he's just a young punk with absolutely no religious training and a whole lot of ambition to be the next Yassin or Nasrallah. We can't let those guys fester because they will ruthlessly exploit our tolerance and make their followers think that we are weak.

[humblegunner]

Now the shi'ite is going to hit the rotors.

Hakuna Moqtada!

[GreatOne]

I saw an interesting exchange between Daniel Pipes and Col. Hunt on Jerry Rivers' show yesterday. Pipes was saying we can't really do anything now, and should just back off and away from the cities (which really surprised me). Col. Hunt essentially said, "Screw that! Go in, find him, and kill him".

I agree with Col. Hunt. Can't free the Iraqis from one madman just to allow them to fall under the control of another. This al-Sadr a--hole is probably the primary cleric working with Iran in murdering all the moderate/pro-U.S. clerics in Iraq. Get rid him of s.o.b.

[Eddie Dean]

I thought we learned that treating these murderous b@stards as matters for law enforcement, instead of the enemy combatants that they are, was a failed approach... (?)

[vbmoneyspender]

I think you miss my point. If the Sunnis in Fallujah figured out that we were going to be distracted with the Shiites loyal to Sadr, then they might have decided it would be a good time to undertake the made for tv mutilations that occurred on Wednesday. And this wouldn't be the first time where the Sunnis have gotten important info ahead of time, e.g. when they almost took out Wolfowitz when he was staying out that hotel in downtown Baghdad or when they attacked one of the forts that Abizaid was visiting apparently while he was there.

[Investment Biker]

Who will rid me of this priest?

[Travis McGee]

I'd rather take out our high profile enemies by the Yassin method.

[WOSG]

About right.

Our greatest loss was when Sadr killed Khoei, the more moderate Shiite. Sistani aint the greatest, but he's our best hand to play in the shiite community right now.
He's playing us and we're playing him. Sistani wants a shiite majoritarian rule (bad idea which we are fighting to protect Kurds etc.) but at least is no theocrat like some others.

He will watch carefully how we deal with Sadr. If Sistani is smart he will keep biding his time and let us take out one of his troublesome competitors without either helping us or complaining (right now).

If Sistani turns on us, though, shiite will really hit the fan.

[Lunatic Fringe]

Who issued the warrant? US forces or the Iraqi police?

[OXENinFLA]

From what I've read it was an Iraqi judge.

[Eurotwit]

Hey Travis,

Did you watch the press conference?

The approach taken by the coalition seems very much to be a legalistic one, not a militaristic one.

I.e. this is an arrest warrant by an Iraqi judge, the new Iraqi legal system in action, etc etc.

Thoughts?

[montag813]

He'll be hiding in his mosque forever.

He's not hiding. He's bravely conducting a "sit-in strike" (was he educated at Berkeley?) inside the mosque. It takes a real man to stage a defiant protest indoors. lol

[Travis McGee]

I didn't see it. Watch out for entire units of "our" Iraqi police to flip to the enemy when it comes to crunch time. If this happens, all bets are off.

[Drammach]

They know where he is.. In his mosque, surrounded by his "militia" troops..

General (dimwit) Kimmit will not go after him, however, for fear of upsetting the locals, by "defiling" their holy mosque..

It's time to get some real leadership over there, get rid of these idiotic staff officers with more political considerations than strategy and tactics..

Surround that damned mosque and demand immeadiate surrender..
Wait 15 minutes...
Blow the living hell out of the place and anything that moves within it..
Go in and locate Sadr's body..
Hang it by the feet in front of the mosque,(what's left of it) as an example..

[Steve_Seattle]

Every "introduction to Islam" I've ever read mentions that - as a supposed point of superiority to Christianity - Islam has no official clergy or priesthood, that it is a religion in which there are no intermediaries between man and God. Bullfeathers! The Middle East is crawling with these flea-bitten Imams who have an enormously detrimental influence on their societies. In the present world, Islam is far more clergy-ridden - in terms of influence, if not necessarily numbers - than Christianity; there is no comparision.