Posted on 02/25/2006 9:24:16 AM PST by jmc1969
Iraq's Defence Minister warned yesterday of a "civil war" that "will never end" and said he was ready to put tanks on the streets as sectarian violence flared despite a second day of curfew in Baghdad.
Extending a traffic ban in the capital to Monday after battles around Sunni mosques and a car bomb in a holy Shiite city, leaders scrambled to break a round of reprisals sparked by a suspected al-Qaeda bombing of a Shiite shrine on Wednesday.
The gravest crisis since the US invasion in 2003 threatens Washington's hopes of withdrawing its 136,000 troops from Iraq.
"If there is a civil war in this country it will never end," Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a minority Sunni Muslim in the Shiite-led interim government, told a news conference.
"We are ready to fill the streets with armoured vehicles."
Iraq's 200,000-plus, U.S.-trained security forces have few tanks but US forces, which routinely patrol Baghdad with heavy armour, are also standing by, commanders said. The loyalties of the untried police and Iraqi army could be tested in any clash with militias from which many were recruited.
Gunmen wearing the black clothing preferred by some Shiite militias attacked two mosques in the south of the city with rocket-propelled grenades late on Friday, police said. Residents said local Sunnis defending one of the mosques appeared to fire both on the militiamen and on police commandos who intervened.
(Excerpt) Read more at smh.com.au ...
I blame the Brits of the 20s....
[Insert Pottery Barn store policy here]
Oh course it will be endless just as the United States war on racism and discrimination is a endless one because the fire is allowed to be continously fed and expanded by those who benefit the most by conflict.
????
ok...
Didn't they lower the curfew in Saladin and Diyala? What is happening there?
Iraq should have been partitioned immediately after Saddam was captured. That is probably the biggest mistake of all.
I tried telling Karl Rove thise would happen three years ago, but he wouldn't listen. He said there wouldn't be an insurgency because "Iraqis are well-educated people and they will welcome us as liberators."
We have no assurances the final Iraqi government won't be as bad, if not worse than Saddam.
I agree.
Pretty pathetic if all the "insurgents" had to do to de-rail Iraq was blow up a single shrine, however important it's supposed to be. The Shiite Iraqis have got to realize that the more they let this provoke them, the happier they're making the very people who destroyed their shrine. I hold out hope that they'll realize this but, unfortunately, Islamic society in general seems to have a distaste for reason and logic in such matters, as evinced recently by the Battle of Khartoun.
You don't understand who is behind the violence. Sadr is the one behind the Shia violence and he is using the violence to help his political position.
I would have to say the Madhi Army is behind 95% of the Shia on Sunni violence.
We didn't do it because our so-called "friends" the Turks didn't like it.
Then you don't understand why that is totally impossible. The Sunni western Iraq has no oil what so ever and neither does mixed central Iraq.
The Sunnis would not let themselves shrivle up and die economically while the Shia and Kurds are awash in oil. We would be in a far worse boat then we are in now as a fully blown civil war would have broken out in a matter of months.
"These are Semites and remnant Sumerian's and Chaldeans and Arameans...5,000+ years of hatred, war, death and slaughter."
It's been all downhill ever since Sargon of Akkad!
It wouldn't surprise me a bit, but even he can only have real influence if the populace let's him stir them up.
Sadr and Zarqawi have had a mutual relationship for some time.
Zarqawi sparked Shia anger in March of 2004 by killing almost 200 Shia, and Sadr used that anger to start a rebellion against the US and used his militia as the backbone of the Shia rebellion.
I hate him, I loathe him, I detest him, I despise him, I find him reprehensible, repulsive, evil...
And did I say I HATE him??
I'm not supposed to hate. I'm a Christian. But Mookie Sadr has caused misery for so many before and a couple of my co-workers were killed in April '04 because of him.
Now he's pulling this crap again. He's got this whole city paralyzed even though the trouble is only in one part of town and he needs to assume room temperature. Become metaphysically challenged. Be GONE.
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