City of defiance

[bemildred]

Always nice to see actual reporting ...

They came from across Iraq, marching
in solidarity with Shia brothers. Civilians
­ they bear no arms, for the moment
anyway ­ who are willing die on the
steps of the Imam Ali shrine. Thehuman
shields have arrived in Najaf.
Hundreds have come to what is one of
the most holy Shia sites on solidarity
marches in recent days. Many more
have made their way in smaller groups
from nearby towns and neighbourhoods.
More than 2,000 have now pledged their
allegiance to the Shia cleric Muqtada
Sadr and are based in the compound at
the shrine.
Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani, a Sadr
spokesman, said the presence of the
civilians was intended to deter American
forces. By simply turning up, they have
maximised the loss of human life that
could result from any attempt to storm
the holy sites, a course already fraught
with danger because of the outrage that
serious physical damage to the shrine
would provoke across Iraq and well
beyond. The human shield supporters
also appear ready to take up arms left by
insurgents killed or wounded in the
fighting.
Battles continued yesterday as
insurgents used their extensive local
knowledge of the huge Wadi al-Salam
cemetery, a section of which remains
within the area under the control of
Sadr's Mehdi Army's to play what one US
officer called a "cat and mouse game"
with US forces.

IndependentUK(more)

[Catfight]

1. Defiance, it really is a place in Ohio!

[Bronco69]

2. LOL!

I was raised in Defiance, Ohio! :-)

[teryang]

3. Blood bath coming?

Is anyone even keeping track anymore?

"Is there a war in Iraq?" Jon Stewart

[tlcandie]

4. They have arrested and/or pushed out all reporters under threat

of arrest, etc., so, IMO, it's ripe for the scorched earth policy. :cry:

[mom cat]

5. I bet they didn't get all of thr reporters....Perhaps I am just hoping.

[bemildred]

6. Doubt it, but who knows with these loons?

Seems to be a good deal of dithering back and forth.
The current theory is that we are going to bring some Iraqi
forces down to invade the shrine and kick al Sadr's ass,
as soon as we find some that we can trust with weapons.

Meanwhile our troops are supposed to hold the fort, and
the low-level war continues as it was last week.

Politically, things are spinning out of control.

My own opinion is that the Allawi government is well and
completely fucked, but who knows how long it will take for
the final crumbling to occur.

Bombing the place flat or "taking the Shrine" has the same
drawbacks here as it did in Faloojah, the enemy is learning
all the time, and there are no aces in the hole that I can
see. It would be an act similar to the guy who shoots his
wife and kids and then himself to get even for her unfaithfulness
to force the issue, and yet everything else just leaves us looking
like losers, and we can't afford that either, eh?

[teryang]

8. I'm leery of both the unarmed martyrs and the threats

...on the press. The notion of unarmed persons imagining themselves as some kind of shield bothers me a lot. The possibilities are appalling. The learning curve of Sadrs militia leaves something to be desired also. It seems to have been little more than slaughter.


The threats on the press are just outrageous. I can't help but think this notion comes from the Iraqi guards' trainers.

I don't want any more casualties on either side. As a practical matter American forces should get out of town and manipulate everything in domestic media world and let the charade take it's course.

[bemildred]

9. There you go again, trying to be rational, you would not do well at all

in the "new democratic" Iraq. The militia's kill ratio is
not impressive, but it is not zero, I have around half a dozen,
plus friendly Iraqis in the dozens in Najaf, and more mayhem in
the Baghdad slums. Some Colonel from Faloojah is reported to have
come down to help out, and the AMS has issued a fatwah for Sunnis
to refuse to help the gov't fight al Sadr. The loons in Baghdad
immediately surrounded the AMS with Humvees and threatened to
search the place top to bottom for terrorist stuff. And there is
much more, but the media seems to be suffering from fatique and
does not choose to report much of it, so you have to dig and
grovel to find things.

The possibilities ARE appalling, but al Sadr's enemies have already
blinked several times, it's very like Faloojah in some ways.

[teryang]

10. Thanks for keeping us updated

I've been out of it for a while, the new job, then the hurricane. You are a valuable source of input on Iraq. It's appreciated.

[bemildred]

11. Obsessions have their uses.

It's nice to see you here too,
I hope the job is working out.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Here's some pics from Najaf

[acmavm]

12. Too bad these pictures aren't being shown on the front pages of the

New York Times, Washington Post, etc. Because it's tooo damn easy for the bush* administration to spin and lie on just the reports coming out of Iraq. But seeing is believing.

The pictures that came out of My Lai had an amazing effect on this nation during the Viet Nam war. That's when the unbelievers had to face the fact that the war was lost, and are military had been reduced to killers of the aged, children, women, and unarmed civilians.