Free Republic

ARBALA, Iraq, May 7 — American soldiers battled insurgents led by a rebel Shiite cleric on Friday, killing scores of Iraqis, as the cleric delivered a defiant, derisive sermon that dismissed President Bush's expressions of regret for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. "What kind of peace could come from you or your agents when you feel pleasure at torturing prisoners?" the 31-year-old cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, said to cheering supporters at his mosque in Kufa. "How are you going to control the world when you can't control...

April 7, 2003 A Sinister Past Comes to Light at an Iraqi Post By JIM DWYER ARBALA, Iraq, April 6 — To the Americans who arrived by tank and helicopter and Humvee, this city 45 miles south of Baghdad began to reveal itself today in hints of a sinister past in captured military archives. Inside a bombed military headquarters, soldiers found strips of film negatives showing images of people who appeared to have met violent deaths. The images, shown to a reporter, appeared to document injuries on the bodies of three different people. Scores of other negatives kept in the...