Fierce fighting erupts in Najaf, 7 other Iraqi cities

[bemildred]

US troops and Shiite militiamen
fought fierce battles in the holy
Iraqi city of Najaf on Monday,
just hours after political and
religious leaders in Baghdad
agreed to make a last-ditch
appeal for peace.

Broadening their uprising from
the urban battlefield in Najaf and seven other cities, the
Mehdi militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr set an oil
well on fire in southern Iraq, the government said, sparking
a jump in world oil prices.

Iraqis meeting to pick an interim national assembly in
Baghdad said they would send a delegation to Najaf to try
to convince Sadr to end a conflict that has killed hundreds
and undermined the authority of Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi.

Earlier, officials said the delegation had left Baghdad, but
there were last minute hiccups with transport. Officials said
the group now expected to leave early on Tuesday.

Daily Star

Edit: bungled the link first time.

[Az_lefty]

1. Here we go........

:shrug:

[bemildred]

3. I think it's really a recap of today (Monday).

Lots of bluster from politicians, and continued low-level
conflict and street fighting.

[BeHereNow]

2. An ORGANIZED Guerilla army...

Our poor troops.
The neocons should burn in hell for this.
BHN

[bemildred]

4. I vote making them permanent residents of a cattle "waste lagoon". nt

[BeHereNow]

6. How about the Pig Waste Lagoon

in Crawford?
No wait, pigs are intelligent and well mannered.
I would not wish them upon pig shit, however far removed
from the source.
BHN

[bemildred]

7. Bullshit is more appropriate, but I thought about pigs. nt

[ItsMyParty]

5. The Iraq War is over----don't you pay any attention???

..and that, unfortunately, is an impression people are getting from this mess being nicely kicked off the front page (so to speak) to a back page in news converage. As soon as the "transfer" happened, the media did the repuke bidding and started to erase this whole thing out of the people's minds. If you notice, Bush is leaning big on "terrorism" but wants to distance himself from the Iraq cluster fuck. I've said for weeks now that Kerry needs to get Iraq right back in front of the people, remind them that the mission is not only not accomplished but the mission is a disaster, etc. because people are just not paying attention any more. If Bush can erase much of it by November he will have gotten by with murder. This has to stay front and center in front of the public.

[stickdog]

8. Is this all just a neocon passion play?

The latest US corporate news has me thinking as much:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/9417285.htm?1c

BAGHDAD, Iraq - With U.S. and Iraqi troops poised for a decisive assault on the militia of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a conference that had assembled to pick an interim legislature agreed Monday to dispatch a delegation to the conflicted city of Najaf in a last-ditch effort to persuade al-Sadr to end his fight.

The decision to make the urgent appeal came on a day of continued fighting between al-Sadr's forces and American troops as U.S. tanks edged closer to the Imam Ali shrine, where al-Sadr's militiamen have taken refuge.

<snip>

The decision to send the peace mission to Najaf as early as Tuesday underscores the frustration that delegates to the conference have expressed over the fighting in one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. The conference of 1,100 Iraqis convened to select members of an interim national assembly - a key step toward self-rule - but has been dominated by discussion of the fighting in Najaf since it began Sunday.

Sunday, conference delegates demanded that interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his administration impose an immediate nationwide cease-fire, but clashes continued Monday throughout Iraq.


When I think neocons, I think "bad Republican screenwriters." It usually fits. In this case the screenplay goes like this:

1) Provoke al-Sadr into fighting, then surround him and the Najaf shrine with overwhelming force.

2) Send in a negotiating team to see what kind of deal al-Sadr will cut.

3) Come to a working agreement.

4) Suddenly pull out the negotiating team and cut off all negotiations.

5) Create a bullshit disturbance at the bullshit Baghdad "Democracy Forum" while flexing your military muscles around the shrine.

6) Tell everyone, "This is democracy in action!" Rinse and repeat.

7) Send a "last minute" negotiating team -- "forced by the Iraqis' nascent democracy and freedom" -- and put the already agreed upon offer back on the table.

Hooray for Operation Iraqi puppet Legitimacy!

I realize that this plan calls for something the neocons have yet to demonstrate -- namely, competence. But I'm pretty certain that this is what they are trying for. Now it's just a case of seeing if they can control their own hubris enough to pull it off.

[bemildred]

9. Applying Occam's Razor, it is simpler to posit they are morons.

No elaborate planning required that way, no genius planner,
no split-second coordination, just bumble, stumble, flop, and
so on.

[stickdog]

12. Yes, that theory very closely explains the facts at hand.

But you know what they say about blind squirrels ...

[Warpy]

17. Morons blinded by greed

Hell, Halliburton could have done a nice chunk of profiteering, scalping US taxpayers for all the equipment and materials for the rebuilding as they hired the cheaper and more effective Iraqi contractors to put people back to work rebuilding their country,

But noooo, they had to get greedy at all levels, overcharging to bring US workers into that country to snap up all the employment to be had in the rebuilding effort, leaving the Iraqis to face 70% unemployment.

It's hard to see how they could have botched this thing any worse without using nuclear weapons. I suppose there's still time to do that, though, and that scares me.

[paulk]

20. I've been wondering about this...

At first I thought perhaps Sadr had instigated this latest round of fighting - maybe hoping to take down Allawi before the provisional government had a chance to grow roots. But as time passes it's become increasingly clear that the Americans are behind this - and the question is why? I mean, if I were running for president, I'd want the whole Iraq thing on the back burner.

I'm beginning to think that the Bush election strategy is to provoke an even bigger conflagration - to bring on civil war in Iraq - in the hope that the American people will get behind the Commander in Chief when the shit hits the fan.

The disbanding of the Fallujah Brigade is another piece of the puzzle. Is the Sunni triangle going to explode again?

Or is it really just plain old fashioned incompetence? It seems like every step of the way these people have done the exact wrong thing. It's mind numbing - I want to believe there is a way out of this - but BushCo just keeps digging a deeper and deeper hole.

[janx]

21. Incompetence, I think.

Civil war for Iraq was inevitable as soon as the Chimp began just to *think* about the invasion and occupation.

[bemildred]

23. It seems pretty clear:

1.) We picked the fight. Al Sadr is a real thorn in our side.
But, as usual we bungled it when we tried to take him and as
usual, it has sort of blown up in our face.

2.) The faloojah thing seems to boil down to the fact that we are
not going to PAY the Faloojah fellows not to attack us anymore.
Didn't work very much anyway.

[ejcastellanos]

27. It is to inflame the Shiite population and bring in Iran - NT

[teryang]

10. US army threatens fresh strikes in Samarra

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=10981

More evidence of sovereignty:

<"If we find enemies in Samarra, we will strike, because it's good for people of Samarra and its good for people of Iraq," said Major General John Batiste, commander of 1st Infantry Division.

"We need to take control of Samarra, for the sake of its 250,000 people," he said on the sidelines of an Iraqi national guard graduation ceremony.

In a meeting with Batiste, provincial governor Hamid Homood Shakti asked US troops to reopen a bridge in the city, but the general refused until "terrorists and foreign fighters" leave Samarra.

We have "tens of millions dollars in projects in Samarra, but you won't get a dime as long as the city is not working hands to hands with the coalition," he said.>

Most likely the money comes from unaccounted for Iraqi oil revenues.

[bemildred]

11. Oh yeah, that one.

It's interesting that this half-wit is whining about the
lack of cooperation and promising the moon, but refuses out
of hand the first simple good-faith gesture suggested to him.

[stickdog]

16. Samarra & Samarra & Samarra

Bush is but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: he is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

[bemildred]

19. Heh.

:thumbsup:

[janx]

13. All hell is breaking loose over there, yesterday and today:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1994&dept_id=339133&newsid=12708676&PAG=461&rfi=9

NAJAF, Iraq - U.S. tanks rolled into the Old City of Najaf toward a holy Shiite shrine where militants were hiding Monday as participants at a national conference voted to send a delegation here to try to negotiate an end to the fighting.


The city, which had been quiet early Monday, was hit by series of explosions in the late morning that shook the vast cemetery, the scene of many battles between U.S. forces and militants. Witnesses also reported U.S. tanks had moved to within 500 yards of the revered Imam Ali Shrine.

"We are proceeding with our operations. We are moving forward and we captured some positions inside the Old City from the south during the night and this morning," Police Chief Brig. Ghalib al-Jazaari said.

Fighting resumed Sunday after negotiations and a cease-fire collapsed. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in Najaf fighting Sunday, and a Marine was killed in Iraq's western, largely Sunni province of Anbar. At least 934 U.S. servicemembers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.

(much more at link)

[mom cat]

14. What happened to the Iraqi soldiers leading the charge? or did

they all get "sensitive" about conducting a masacre?

[janx]

15. Police Fire at Reporters as US Tanks Roll Up to Shrine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/16/wirq216.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/16/ixnewstop.html


The bullet that whistled through the lobby of the Sea Hotel in Najaf yesterday, embedding shards of glass into a foreign reporter's cheek before lodging itself in an air-conditioning unit, carried an unmistakeable message: "Get out."

Journalists working in Iraq have long lived with the danger of being targeted by insurgents fighting US-led forces and their Iraqi allies.

But in Najaf the roles have been abruptly reversed. Now the Iraqi police threaten journalists, and the insurgents welcome them.

As US marines and Iraqi security forces resumed their operation to evict insurgents from the Shrine of Ali, the holiest place in Shia Islam, the Iraqi interim government decided yesterday to treat the media as the enemy.

(much more at link)

[Rose Siding]

18. Knight Ridder has a decent piece on the delegates appeal

It's sad- They sound so desperate. Some of the concessions are better than anything that the US alone would arrange, it appears:

snip>
The delegates' peace plan calls for al-Sadr's militia to withdraw from the shrine, turning it over to Iraqi government and religious authorities. It also calls for al-Sadr to participate in the political process, which he largely has shunned, and to transform the Mahdi Army into a political entity.

"The presence of armed militias, in the eyes of the law and in the conventions of the civilized countries, is wrong," Shiite Muslim cleric Sheik Hussein al-Sadr, a distant relative of Muqtada al-Sadr, told fellow delegates Monday.

He also said it was wrong for any single person - "no matter how important" - to control the Imam Ali shrine. "The religious shrines are not the personal property of anyone. They are holy places open to everyone," he said.

Sheik Qais al Khalazee, an al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, said the proposal would be considered and that the delegation was welcome in Najaf.

"We're welcoming any attempt from any side to solve this problem peacefully," al Khalazee said. "Any person who wants to go to Najaf with a reasonable and fair solution without any American influence, he'll be very welcomed."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9417285.htm

Knight Ridder's great. They note that the coverage from within the city is sketchy because the press was tossed and they always use the truest casuality numbers: "At least 934 U.S. service members have died since military operations in Iraq began in March 2003."

[GHOSTDANCER]

22. 7 others??? Mission accomplished my ass............

[daleo]

24. I wonder what the last minute hiccups with transport were

Maybe being shot at?

[bemildred]

26. I was wondering about the tactical effect of, ummm,

logistics issues, but you are not going to find out much
about that until after the fact, because that kind of
knowlege is tactically relevant, it gets people killed,
or not. To some degree, the same can be said of the
effectiveness of attacks on the supply lines. So yeah,
but don't expect to get your curiosity satisfied.

[MetaTrope]

25. PRIVATE SECURITY GUARDS will be escorting the peace delegation?!

Is that a red flag waving, or what?