Posted on 11/24/2006 12:06:43 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
1123dv-iraq-sadr-attack Shiite militiamen doused six Sunni Arabs with kerosene and burned them alive as Iraqi soldiers stood by, and killed 19 other Sunnis in attacks on their mosques Friday, taking revenge for the slaughter of at least 215 Shiites in the Sadr City slum the day before.
The mosque attacks came after the government, in a desperate attempt to avert civil war, imposed a sweeping curfew on the capital, shut down the international airport and closed the country's main outlet to the shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf.
The Mahdi Army militiamen, armed with machines guns and rocket-propelled grenades, swept through Hurriyah neighborhood near an Iraqi army post, burning four mosques and several homes, and attacking worshippers as they left Friday services, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. Gunmen loyal to the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had begun to take over the mixed neighborhood this summer and a majority of its Sunni residents had fled.
Three Sunni mosques elsewhere in Baghdad came under attack later in the day, and in Sadr City a U.S. helicopter shot back at Shiite militiamen who opened fire on it from the ground, residents said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Hussein said at least 25 Sunnis were killed and 14 wounded in the mosque attacks in Hurriyah, despite a 24-hour curfew that the government imposed to try to prevent reprisal killings in the capital.
The Baghdad attacks appeared to have been a reaction to the deaths in Sadr City on Thursday, when Sunnis unleashed bombs and mortars that killed 215 people and wounded 257 in the deadliest assault since the U.S.-led invasion. The killings threatened to tip Iraq's widespread sectarian violence into full-scale civil war pitting majority Shiites against minority Sunnis.
In the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, 23 people were killed and 43 wounded when explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership, said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri.
In Baghdad, al-Sadr followers warned they would suspend their membership in parliament and the Cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush in Jordan next week, a member of parliament said. Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman.
The al-Sadr bloc in parliament and government is the backbone of al-Maliki's political support, and its withdrawal, if only temporarily, would be a severe blow to the prime minister's already shaky hold on power.
Legislator Qusai Abdul-Wahab, an al-Sadr follower, blamed U.S. forces for Thursday's bombings in Sadr City because they failed to provide security.
"We say occupation forces are fully responsible for these acts, and we call for the withdrawal of occupation forces or setting a timetable for their withdrawal," Abdul-Wahab said.
Al-Sadr's followers hold six Cabinet seats and have 30 members in the 275-member parliament.
Al-Sadr also challenged sheik Harith al-Dhari, the Sunnis' most influential leader who heads the Association of Muslim Scholars, to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, that condemned Sunni attacks on Shiites.
Leading about 5,000 worshippers in Friday prayers at a mosque in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, the cleric said al-Dhari should ban Sunnis from joining al-Qaida in Iraq and organize the reconstruction of the Shiite Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, north of the capital.
Suspected al-Qaida bombers blew the shrine apart Feb. 22. Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and associated death squads are believed responsible for killing hundreds of Sunnis since suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants bombed the Golden Dome mosque. That attack set off a surge of retaliatory killings between Shiites and Sunnis that have raged all year.
In Sadr City on Friday, hundreds of men, women and children beat their chests, chanted and cried as they walked beside vehicles carrying the caskets of their loved ones to the holy Shiite city of Najaf. Despite Baghdad's curfew, al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, ordered police to guard the processions.
Once the processions reached the edge of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, the cars and minivans left most of the mourners behind and began the 100-mile drive south to Najaf, a treacherous journey that passes through many checkpoints and areas controlled by Sunni militants in Iraq's so-called "Triangle of Death."
As cleanup crews continued removing remains of the dead from wreckage of the car bombs, tents were erected where relatives could receive condolences.
In the well-coordinated Sadr City attack, Sunni insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars, forcing Iraqi leaders into a meeting aimed at containing the growing sectarian war.
The attack surpassed coordinated blasts on March 2, 2004, that struck Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing a total of at least 181 Iraqis and wounding 573. A bombing in the southern city of Hillah that targeted mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits, killed 125 and wounded more than 140 in February 2004.
The bloodshed underlined the impotence of the Iraqi army and police to quell determined sectarian extremists at a time when the United States appears to be considering a move to accelerate the handover of security responsibilities.
"We condemn such acts of senseless violence that are clearly aimed at undermining the Iraqi people's hopes for a peaceful and stable Iraq," said White House spokesman Jeanie Mamo.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also condemned the violence and in a statement urged "the Iraqi people to heed the calls by political and religious leaders from all sides for calm and restraint to prevent an escalation of the situation."
The government imposed the curfew in the capital Thursday night and also closed its international airport. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country's main outlet to the Gulf.
Leaders from Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm. Al-Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.
The car bombings - three by suicide drivers and two of parked cars - billowed black smoke up into clouds hanging low over blood-smeared streets jammed with twisted and charred cars and buses in the sprawling Shiite slum, which is a stronghold of al-Sadr's militia, a key al-Maliki backer.
Thursday's Sadr City slaughter occurred moments after an attack by 30 masked Sunni gunmen who tried to storm the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry in Baghdad. Seven ministry guards were wounded.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1743438/posts
Nobody on the planet believes that, although Sadr might irresponsibly say it.
Report: Iraq-Based Jihadists Seek to Expand War to North Africa
Do they blame the attacks in Algeria on the USA? 100,000 killed in the past few years.
All better now.
Kofi nipped it in the bud before the hard hitting armament was put to use.
Like pantie head dresses or American soldiers actually destroying mosques./s
An outside observer might see moslem attacking moslem with insane ferocity and wonder if these moslems hate Jews and Christians as much as they hate moslems.
al-Sadrs head should have been on a stick a long time ago.
It's time to bring our Soldiers home.
Let the barbarians have at it.
Although he is getting his due, perhaps Saddam had a firm understanding as to what was required to maintain the peace in such a pit of murderous minded Neanderthals.
Let the barbarians have at it.
Until they bring there barbarous ways here...?
Again?
He did. He wore a 45 on his hip from age 12 so he could go to school. He completed school and college and got his real education at the same time.
Did Kofi threaten them with food for Oil again?
Works for Kofi and his son, CHA-CHING CHA-CHING!
MUHARRAQ, Bahrain — About 1,500 people chanting for the prime minister's resignation marched through this capital city Friday, accusing the government of working to rig the weekend elections against Bahrain's Shiite majority.
A huge turnout is expected when polls open Saturday after a campaign that has been fierce and dirty, with rally tents vandalized, allegations of secret government funding for favored candidates and torrents of text messages flooding mobile phones. Anonymous messages warn Sunni Muslims to back pro-government candidates against the Shiite Muslim-led opposition or face Iraq-style chaos.
"Wake up Sunnis!" reads one broadly distributed message. "Don't be naive or your fate will be like the Iraqi Sunnis who lost their rights and their lives."
The landmark election in this U.S.-allied Gulf nation will be closely watched by neighboring Arab monarchies, concerned about rising Shiite influence. It is the first time since the constitution was restored in 2001 that the opposition is giving the pro-government candidates a run for their money. The main opposition party boycotted the 2002 elections.
Bahrain is the only Arab nation besides Iraq where Shiites hold a majority of the population, and the impoverished community here has long complained of being squeezed out of power.
November 23, 2006
Before - and After - Iraq
By Victor Davis Hanson
********************8AN EXCERPT ***************************
"Our own successful three-week war, but their failed three-year peace."
Such a self-serving disclaimer might best sum up the change of heart of several neoconservative former supporters of the Iraq war - at least according to interviews that appear in the current issues of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker magazines.
Some of these pundits and policy gurus now having second and third thoughts had called for the American ouster of Saddam Hussein as early as 1998. These days, apparently in hindsight, they question whether the present plagued occupation even justified the effective three-week war of 2003.
Americans themselves have made the same dramatic about-face. They once approved of the war by a 70 percent majority. Three years later, they think it was a mistake by almost the same wide margin. Like the pundits, the public follows the pulse of the battlefield - which now seems to be reported solely as a story of improvised explosive devices and sectarian suicide bombing.
See link at post #17.
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There is a book (now available in paperback ):
Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left
(Paperback) by David Horowitz (Author)
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And reviews:
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Editorial Reviews
Rich Lowry, Editor National Review
David Horowitz is synonymous with pyrotechnics. A historian and polemicist of the first order, he is paid the ultimate compliment --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Davis Hanson, Author, Ripples of Battle
An original look at those who want us to fail in the Middle East, both at home and abroad. The --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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See all Editorial Reviews
Fascinating Analysis of Leftist Goals, August 13, 2006
Reviewer: N. Sincerity - See all my reviews
A former 1960s radical, Horowitz is well-acquainted with the Leftist mindset. In this book, he strives to explain the modern alliance between left wing progressivists and radical Islamofascists. He argues that this alliance is based on a common desire to destroy Western capitalism. Leftist sympathy with Islamofascist ideas makes no sense from an intellectual point of view, given that countries ruled by radical Islamists are among the most racist, sexist, theocratic states in the world today. However, Leftists have recognized that they can benefit politically from destructive terrorist attacks on the Western world. A West under attack can be made to turn on its leaders in fear and desperation (as they did in Spain after the Madrid train bombings). Only once people reject current government structures can the Left execute its anti-capitalist revolution and build a new reality that mirrors the Leftist view of utopia. The complete and utter idealogical hypocrisy of the Islamofascist-Leftist alliance is distressing, but as Horowitz reminds us, Leftists radicals truly believe the ends justify the means.
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