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Learning from Sadr April 08, 2004 National Review Online Michael Rubin/ Listen to the Iraqis. As violence provoked by Muqtada al-Sadr's fringe Jaysh al-Mahdi militia enters its third day, Washington remains in a frenzy of misplaced panic. Senator Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.), in remarks rebroadcast throughout the Arab world on the al-Jazeera satellite television, declared "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam and this country needs a new president." Senators Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) and Joseph Biden (D., Del.) raised the spectre of civil war in separate April 6 interviews. Speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate on April 7, Robert...

NAJAF, Iraq - The murder of a pro-Western cleric in this holy city two weeks ago removed America's most promising Shiite Muslim ally and now threatens to fracture Iraq's Shiite majority into warring factions. As accusations reverberate over who was behind the violence, a senior religious authority of the Grand Imam Ali Mosque, where Shiite leader Abdul Majid al Khoei was killed on April 10, said the murderers were followers of Moqtada al Sadr, a fiery young Shiite cleric. Jabar Khanee Jaafer, the mosque's deputy custodian, described the murder in an exclusive and emotional interview with a Knight Ridder...

<p>April 14, 2003 -- IT was to be an op-ed in 900 words for a Western newspaper, speaking of the gratitude Iraqi Shiites feel toward the United States and its allies for having enabled them to regain control of their shrines in southern Mesopotamia for the first time in more than 40 years.</p>