Posted on 10/24/2006 12:25:06 AM PDT by jmc1969
Where are the killers coming from?
That was the question U.S. officers pondered at a cramped command post called Apache. They examined a map showing where scores of corpses had turned up in recent weeks.
"Sadr City," said Capt. Will Wade of the 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment. "That's the nucleus."
Two years ago it was a battleground where fervent but outmatched militiamen led by Muqtada Sadr, the militantly anti-U.S. cleric, made suicidal stands against American tanks and helicopter gunships.
These days, many U.S. commanders view the neighborhood as something akin to Cambodia during the Vietnam War — a sanctuary for the militia known as the Al Mahdi army, whose zealous volunteers are dispatched elsewhere in pogroms against their Sunni Arab countrymen.
"They're in the export business, so a lot of their force is outside Sadr City," said Maj. Charles St.Clair, who served as a military advisor in Sadr City with the 506th Regimental Combat Team. "The fact that the Corleones or the Gottis may live in my neighborhood doesn't mean they do all their business there."
U.S. and allied forces are worried that Sadr City is becoming an Iraqi version of the Hezbollah bastions of southern Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon.
"If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy, then preventing the [Al Mahdi army] from developing into a state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority," William Patey, Britain's former ambassador to Iraq, wrote recently in a confidential memo leaked to the media.
After U.S. forces raided Sadr City in August, the Shiite-dominated administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki made it clear the district was virtually untouchable.
"This won't happen again," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
We need a government in Baghdad to keep and pay the Iraqi Army otherwise it will break up and the country will decend into chaos and bloodletting the type that hasn't been seen in the Middle East in decades.
If nothing changes in Iraq a few months from now a strongman like Allawi might be a very good choice to make.
Let him rule the country for 10 years so things could stablize enough to ensure peaceful democratic transition in the future.
Allawi should be in sole command of the Iraqi Army. He is secular and is a friend of the Americans.
That's good enough at this point.
That may happen, I hope Maliki manages to show even a tiny bit of gumption in the next four months in which case it wouldn't have to happen, but if Maliki doesn't do anything like he is doing now the choice will be a strongman for Iraq for a while or chaos.
At this point, Iraq is neither. But how do we put a strong man in his place to lead the Iraqi? We shouldn't be interfering in their affairs by removing their ineffective Prime Minister from power.
Uh-huh. Then you go clear it. Let me know how it goes.
We won't do anything, the Iraqi Army would be more then happy to do it, but we would have to sit back and let them and it would get ugly of course because they would have to start removing the opposition like Sadr and Hakim.
We should have taken him out when we had the chance.
That brings to another point. Was it a mistake for Bremer to dismantle the Iraqi Army in 2003 to eliminate Ba'athists?
Thank you!!! We have really put he cart before the horse in this situation. Personally, I think we did it to keep the whinners quiet but, it didn't work. I remember reading the other day right here that it is the President of Iraq that has directed us to keep our hands off Al Sadr. We gave the reigns over way too soon, now its going to be really hard getting them back.
I think Iraq will be much calmer in a couple of years or so but I can't say for certain if our next President is willing to commit our troops in there.
there was a time early on in Iraq the Sadr was in captivity, how and who managed to get his release?
Probably the Iraqi Governing Council back in 2003 during the great Shi'ite uprising.
Maliki (sp?) asked for him to be released.
If we really want to win this its way past time for a demonstrtion of force.
Tell them to evacuate sadr city and 24 hours to the second turn it into smoking hole. Conventionally level the town, then inform them that the next time it will happen without warning, and immediately level another city.
You'll finally get their attention and their warped sense of respect.If we don't we wont win, we'll plod on loosing boys while trying to appear p.c.
"Was it a mistake for Bremer to dismantle the Iraqi Army in 2003 to eliminate Ba'athists?"
It was a massive mistake, probably the biggest of the conflict. We didn't need 400,000 troops in Iraq if we had kept the Iraqi Army and used them as a tool. These guys knew the lay of the land and where the extreme Saddam loyalists were hold out.
The Baathists by in large were loyal to one person themselves. After the war it would have cost us very little in comparison to what we spend each month in Iraq to pay the Army and have them protect the borders and enforce security on the streets of Iraq.
Instead we kicked them all out of their jobs which left thousands of military men hanging around which were easy pray for Saddam's inner circle and the foreign fighters who came in with lots of money and thus offered them all part time jobs attacking US troops, building bombs, and hiding terrorists.
We've got to pull the weeds if we want the country to grow. My brother was in Afghanistan he told me of the bartering you would have to do with the warlords because they had their own armies. IMHO, Al Sadr has a huge following, by taking him out and I mean out, not put him in jail, all are afraid of the backlash of his followers because of his martyrdom. But, hey obviously you cannot have any kind of cohesiveness if you have someone like this working against you. I say cut the head off of the snake, when someone else takes over, do it again, and again and again. Eventually they'll get the picture. Watching your leaders get capped consistantly would get real old.
Sadly I have to agree with you.
We need to separate the fight and fix stuff as the combination is deadly to those that are trained to fight.
I think history shows that hammering into total submission is the best and safest approach for the long run.
And therein lies the problem.
Don't lump the Kurds into that bunch. They're not Arab, and they are VERY much on our side. That's a fact.
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