Posted on 04/19/2008 3:45:32 PM PDT by Red Steel
BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government’s monthlong military operation against the fighters.
By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting with little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.
Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr City Mosque, he threatened to declare “war until liberation” against the government if fighting against his militia forces continued. He compared the Iraqi government to that of Saddam Hussein and said that the government had become the enemy along with Sunni extremists and the Americans.
The developments followed a pattern that has been seen again and again in the Basra fighting, where Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi militia has battled Iraqi government troops to a standstill and then retreated. Why his fighters have clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown. But American military and civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that Mahdi Army units trained and equipped by Iran had played a major role in the unexpectedly strong resistance that government troops met in Basra.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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From the article:
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Whether to counter those allegations or simply because, as many Iraqis have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr’s stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his government’s strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called the militias in Basra “outlaws,” the same term that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.
“The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,” Mr. Qumi said. “This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive result in Basra.”
Let that be a lesson, kick em when they are down, and let Allah sort the rest...in hell!
Oh? Isn't that surprising news in itself?
Iran likes the precedent more than they like al Sadr, as they may have some internal "outlaw" trouble of their own in the future.
Talk, talk, talk. If they really felt that way they would stop supplying the guns, EFPs and training.
LOL. He's been hedging his bet all along but it looks like they just raised their bet in favor of Maliki.
Exactly correct, IMHO.
Iran is talking out of both sides of its anal orifice once again.
Its a lot of their Mahdi army trainees and agents from the Quds forces that are getting their butts kicked in Sadr city and Basra.
Now right on que, they pretend like they support the Iraqi government and downplay their involvement in this mess.
And the NY Times is helping them...watch the DemonicRats pick this up!
Al Sadr murdered his way into power, and now he is taking money and support from Iran because all that matters is is power, to hell with his nation, to hell with his supporters, to hell with the people around him.
It looks like the Iraqi government has finally decided to stop playing the game by Al Sadr's rules. They are coming in to wipe out his source of support. Hopefully, they can catch him in his nest and give him a half ounce of Iraqi lead, right in the middle of his unibrow. They'll have to be quick about it, though. This pansy of a "leader" runs off to Tehran whenever the going gets tough.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "Bitter"? "Clinging to Guns"? No, "Dumb as a Box of Rocks"
Yeah. Someone should ask him why Sadr is allowed to keep an apartment in Tehran.
Why should Al-Sadr even still be breathing is a larger question and one that needs answering by a preditor and guided laser missiles.
This idiotic game will continue until al-Sadr and about 40,000 of his sub-retarded goons are all taking a dirt nap. Thats just the bottom line with this. Kill them all, kill them now. Send a message these booger eating savages will actually understand.
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