U.S. obeys order to abandon checkpoints

Associated Press ^ | SINAN SALAHEDDIN

[Dark Skies]

bump

[Yo-Yo]

Sir,

58,148 Americans died in Vietnam. In spite of the nonstop reporting to the contrary, Iraq has a ways to go before they even approach Vietnam, let alone become worse.

[Dead Dog]

And in which, for all too many, the defeat of the USA is "victory," even if it means that their country is reduced to being a chaotic hell-hole of murderous militias and religious fanaticism.

Synergy with the American left. They all live and love the lie. From that point on it all becomes very Biblical.

[Vicomte13]

Let's be deadly clear: the strategy America has pursued since the fall of Saddam CANNOT WIN.

What will happen is what IS happening: the country will fray due to sectarian violence and score-settling, and US casualties will go higher and higher and higher as the US haplessly tries to separate people who want to kill each other.

Eventually...not in 2006, but in 2008, or perhaps in 2012 (because the war will never end for as long as we fight it this way), American domestic resolve to continue to lose our own boys and girls, and to have five maimed for every one killed, in a forever war will collapse. The Democrats will be elected, they will cut the funding, and the Americans will pull out of Iraq in disgrace...just like Vietnam.

To AVOID this, to WIN the war, we need to get out of the way and let the Shi'ites destroy the Sunni Arabs, who have always been our enemies in that country. We need to favor some Shi'ite factions over others. It's the only way.

[conservativecorner]

JUST FRIGGIN' PATHETIC! The democracy thingy in Iraq sucks.

[TexKat]

Bookmark

[TheCrusader]

"Convincing the Iraqis that we really are just there to help now, that it's their county, is part of the way to victory."

Yep, strengthening al Sarde's powerful, anti-U.S. militia is the way to victory. This will just warm the hearts of Iraqis everywhere.

hahahahaha

[TexKat]

Iraqi civilians run for cover as smoke rises from a car bomb blast in Baghdad. Shiite militants have won a major political victory when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered US and Iraqi units to lift a blockade around the flashpoint Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.(AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

A 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldier carries barbed wire as soldiers lift the security cordon around central Baghdad neighborhood Karradah Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006. U.S. troops threw a security cordon around Karradah last Monday and conducted an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Members of the Shi'ite Mehdi army man a checkpoint in Baghdad's Sadr city, October 31, 2006. (Kareem Raheem/Reuters)

172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldiers wind up barbed wire as they lift the security cordon around central Baghdad's neighborhood Karradah Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006. U.S. troops threw a security cordon around Karradah last Monday and conducted an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

A 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldier plays with Iraqi kids just before they lifted the security cordon around central Baghdad's neighborhood Karradah Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006. U.S. troops threw a security cordon around Karradah last Monday and conducted an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

[TexKat]

Residents chant slogans as they gather on a road after U.S. troops abandoned roadblocks in Baghdad's Sadr city, October 31, 2006. Iraq's prime minister, in a very public demonstration of his influence over the U.S. military, ordered the lifting on Tuesday of a week-old cordon around the Baghdad militia stronghold of one of his key Shi'ite allies. REUTERS/KAREEM RAHEEM

[TexKat]

Over 40 Iraqis kidnapped north of Baghdad - police
31 Oct 2006 16:53:12 GMT
Source: Reuters


TIKRIT, Iraq, Oct 31 (Reuters) - More than 40 people are missing after armed kidnappers ambushed minibuses travelling to Baghdad on a main road north of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, police in the city of Tikrit said.

An Iraqi spokesman for the Joint Coordination Center of the Iraqi police and U.S. forces in the mainly Sunni Arab province of Salahaddin said "about 42" people were missing after the incident near Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad.

The gunmen set up a fake checkpoint and stopped vehicles to ask drivers if they came from the Shi'ite villages of Balad and Dujail, the spokesman said.

In what has become a grim feature of the sectarian violence gripping Iraq, gunmen select their victims at random checkpoints based on their religious denomination. Most appear dead later.

Last week, fierce clashes broke out in Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital, involving Iraqi police that blocked Iraq's main highway north from Baghdad to Mosul and the Turkish border.

Dujail is the Shi'ite village where Saddam Hussein survived an assassination attempt in 1982, prompting a government crackdown for which the toppled leader has been tried. He is expecting to hear a possible death sentence verdict on Nov.5.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO159712.htm

[TexKat]

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Oct 31
31 Oct 2006 16:21:03 GMT
Source: Reuters

More Oct 31 (Reuters) - Following are security and other developments in Iraq as of 1600 GMT on Tuesday.

*NAJAF - Sixty gunmen of the Mehdi Army militia loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will be disciplined by an internal court for "wrongdoings", an aide said. Abdul Razzak al-Nidway said the gunmen are said to have carried out killings and forced people to leave homes in different parts of Baghdad.

*BAGHDAD - A car bomb ripped through a wedding procession in the northeastern district of Ur in Baghdad, killing 15 people, including four children, Interior Ministry and police said.

*TIKRIT - More than 40 people are missing after armed kidnappers ambushed minibuses travelling to Baghdad on a main road north of the capital, police in the city of Tikrit said.

TARMIYA - More than 40 people were missing after gunmen mounted a mass kidnap attack on minibuses travelling to Baghdad near Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles), north of the capital, a spokesman for the Joint Coordination Center for Iraqi and U.S. forces in the northern city of Tikrit said.

NEAR SUWAYRA - The bodies of five gunmen were found in an orchard which was the scene of clashes between gunmen and the police several days ago near the town of Suwayra, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

SUWAYRA - The bodies of three people were recovered from the Tigris river in the town of Suwayra, police said.

BAQUBA - The bodies of eight people were found, bound and gagged, in Baquba, police said. All the victims were shot in the head.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed a policeman and wounded three others near the southern Doura district of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry said.

BAQUBA - Clashes between gunmen and police left a policeman dead and three others wounded in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - Gunmen suspected of belonging to a militia run by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, shot and wounded the owners of two shops in Baquba, police said.

FALLUJA - An Iraqi army soldier died in clashes with gunmen in the Sunni city of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

TAL AFAR - Four gunmen and an Iraqi army soldier were killed in clashes in the northern town of Tal Afar, about 420 km (260 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was on Monday shot dead by insurgents during combat operations in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed on Monday when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed three civilians and wounded 10 others in northeastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

*BAGHDAD - A Kurdish man told a court trying Saddam Hussein for genocide he saw Iraqi soldiers marching Kurdish prisoners from a bus and killing them before dumping their bodies in a ditch. The judge later adjourned proceedings until Nov. 7.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered all joint U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints in Baghdad's Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City and other parts of the capital to be lifted as of 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Tuesday. ((Baghdad bureau))

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L31325264.htm

[RC51]

So you mean we let the Iranian type of Shiites kill off all the men, women and children of the wahabi Saudi kind of Sunni's?

Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe if we are lucky Iran will step in to help and Saudi Arabia will step in for the Sunni's. We could just make one giant killing field out of Iraq.

Maybe the Muslims will be so busy killing each other that they'll forgot all about wanting to make us their dhimmi slaves and turning the world back a thousand years under their global Mad Mohammedan Empire.

[The_Reader_David]

True, but having the goverment show that it can protect the interests of the Shia weakens Mookie's hand: his support is based on the perception that the goverment can't protect Shi'ite interests.

This symbolically shows the government can undo something the US did that was harming (in a prosaic, grid-lock inducing sort of way) the residents of Shi'ite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Our boys will still be hunting for the kidnappers, and if we get lucky will catch Mookie himself in a firefight, we just won't be snarling traffic as a tactic for doing it.

[The_Reader_David]

Get out of here. The checkpoints weren't harming Mookie. If anything they were increasing popular support for him by having US troops hassle and inconvenience lots of Shi'ites in Baghdad.

[Vicomte13]

Not exactly, but close.

The Shi'ites of Iraq are divided into two groups. By far the largest are Arab nationalist Shi'ites. They have their own grand ayatollah (Sistani). They are Arabs and Iraqis, and do not want their country to become a religious province of Iran's mullocracy. Shi'ism is not like Catholicism, with an absolute center in the Pope at Rome. It is more like Eastern Orthodoxy, with several patriarchs, each independent, with the Ecumenical Patriarch theoretically first among equals, but with the Greek Church and Russian Church not giving a fig what the leadership of the other Orthodox branch orders. They respect their religious brethren, but they do not OBEY them. That is like most Iraqi Shi'ites. They're ARABS, not Persians. Many are veterans of the war with Iran. They have a deadly grudge against the Sunni Arabs who murdered them (who are not Wahabbis, but the way), not the Sunni Kurds who didn't (and who are also not Wahabbis, but are of a different school of Islam than the Sunni Iraqi Arabs).

The biggest portion of Iraqi shi'ites are Shi'ite Iraqi Arab nationalists.

The smaller portion, but bnetter armed and organized, are the Shi'ite Iraqis who take their religious leadership from Iran. Al Sadr needs to be another tragic case of terminal kinetic energy poisoning.

[TheCrusader]

"The checkpoints weren't harming Mookie. If anything they were increasing popular support for him by having US troops hassle and inconvenience lots of Shi'ites in Baghdad."

Have you seen the news on this strategic disaster? al Sadre's shiite-heads are dancing in the streets, proclaiming victory over running the Americans out of town, which is exactly what they did.

Al Sadre is a terrorist scum whom the U.S. government greatly fears, because he wields so much political power over a huge mass of shia'. In another time, in another war, this fat pig and his militia, would have been taken out years ago. But this is a new day and we live in "enlightented", politically correct times, even to the point of planning wars like she-men.