Shia Showdown

[mediaman007]

Its too bad that we have to cross the globe to find items like this discussed.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=33864200



So elections were too risky.


Retired general Jay Garner, the original choice as US pro-consul in Iraq, was dismissed after a month because he called for early elections in Iraq: "The night after I got to Baghdad, (Defence Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld called me and told me he was appointing Paul Bremer as the presidential envoy... The announcement... was somewhat abrupt." Rumsfeld was worried that an elected Iraqi government would resist mass privatisation of the economy, but he was equally worried that such a government would be Shia-dominated, and insist on an Islamic state.

...

Last March, Paul Bremer made a deal with Sistani. The ayatollah guaranteed that the Shia would remain quiet this year (until George W Bush's re-election bid in the US is safely past, in other words), in return for free elections in Iraq early next year. And then, seeking to insure against the risk that Sadr would try to spoil the deal, Bremer did something very foolish: he attacked Sadr directly.

...

There are to be no witnesses this time: the few journalists in Najaf have been ordered to leave on pain of arrest. But if this ends in a last stand and a massacre of the al-Mahdi militia in the most sacred site in the Shia world, possibly doing serious damage to the Imam Ali mosque itself, the long-term cost to the United States will far outweigh any possible gains. The logic of the strategy is still very hard to follow.

[bemildred]

1. Kick.

I don't know if I buy his reason for going after al Sadr.

I does seem that al Sistani, as so many have before him, will live
to regret trying to do business with Bremer and the neocons.

[Larkspur]

2. The logic behind the Najaf attack is to eliminate Allawi's potential

political rivals. Based upon the last poll taken in Iraq, Al Sadr has a 68% popularity rating inside Iraq. Allawi wasn't a known player when that poll was done.