Some of our troops had entered a city and were progressing toward a mosque when they were confronted by a very large and very noisy crowd barring their path. It looked like it was going to turn ugly, then the platoon leader order his men to point their rifles toward the ground and knell down on one knee.
Right away the crowd calmed down and our people found out that there were bad guys up ahead.
I thought that was one of the most remarkable scenes I had ever witnessed. We have some remarkable people fighting this war.
The Abu Gharib rotten apples notwithstanding, we have a wonderful military that we can be quite proud of.
And I'm not changing my mind, no matter how often Kerry refers to them as war criminals.
"Some of our troops had entered a city and were progressing toward a mosque when they were confronted by a very large and very noisy crowd barring their path. It looked like it was going to turn ugly, then the platoon leader order his men to point their rifles toward the ground and knell down on one knee."
That was in Najaf, in front of one of those "holy shrines" ... this event so impressed the Shiite clerics, that they remember it still. Here is a quote from the letter of Shiite clerics to Hezbollah in Lebanan wrt Al-Sadr.
it is in:
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
"2. It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada that has encouraged the occupiers to cross the red lines. And as aside from that, the American occupiers while storming into Iraq and marching towards Baghdad through Najaf and Karbala did not commit the stupidities and insolence with regard to the sanctities in the two holy cities they have committed now.
And it is clear that the organization of Sayyid Muqtada - and whoever follows the Sadrist movement - were the first to violate the sanctity of the yard of Haydari Shareef (Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf) when they fired shots inside it at Sayyid Abdul Majeed Al-Kho'ei and killed Sayyid Yasiri within it and wounded Sayyid Majeed and killed Sayyid Hayder Al-Kelidar afterwards. And they are the very same who ignited the fuse of the bloody fight, whose victims among gathered believers were sacrificed over control of the shrine of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him),
...
5. The firing of shots at the great dome of the shrine of Imam Ali (peace be upon him) [in Najaf], according to some specialists was most likely from the weapons of Sayyid Muqtada's followers and not from the weapons of others, inasmuch as the time of shooting was the day fighting flared up in the Valley of Peace cemetery, and there wasn't any fighting from the side of Alnabi street, whereas you claimed in your important sermon that the direction of the shooting was from the side of the Qibla gate [to the shrine], which is the side of Alnabi street.
6. The strike on the home and office of his Excellence Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani happened within the security perimeter whose every span was controlled by the organization of Sayyid Muqtada, ..."
In other words, the Shiite clerics figured out by our behavior that we would not cross the 'red lines' unless provoked, and are rebuking others for blaming Americans for violence caused by al-Sadr's forces. They remember how we acted in April 2003, repsecting the shrines.
Patience and low-level persistent killing wins this war.