Posted on 10/24/2006 12:25:06 AM PDT by jmc1969
Where are the killers coming from?
That was the question U.S. officers pondered at a cramped command post called Apache. They examined a map showing where scores of corpses had turned up in recent weeks.
"Sadr City," said Capt. Will Wade of the 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment. "That's the nucleus."
Two years ago it was a battleground where fervent but outmatched militiamen led by Muqtada Sadr, the militantly anti-U.S. cleric, made suicidal stands against American tanks and helicopter gunships.
These days, many U.S. commanders view the neighborhood as something akin to Cambodia during the Vietnam War — a sanctuary for the militia known as the Al Mahdi army, whose zealous volunteers are dispatched elsewhere in pogroms against their Sunni Arab countrymen.
"They're in the export business, so a lot of their force is outside Sadr City," said Maj. Charles St.Clair, who served as a military advisor in Sadr City with the 506th Regimental Combat Team. "The fact that the Corleones or the Gottis may live in my neighborhood doesn't mean they do all their business there."
U.S. and allied forces are worried that Sadr City is becoming an Iraqi version of the Hezbollah bastions of southern Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon.
"If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy, then preventing the [Al Mahdi army] from developing into a state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority," William Patey, Britain's former ambassador to Iraq, wrote recently in a confidential memo leaked to the media.
After U.S. forces raided Sadr City in August, the Shiite-dominated administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki made it clear the district was virtually untouchable.
"This won't happen again," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
He should have been killed months ago.
L
Ping
this is the problem with arabs, you get these loose alliances all the time between faction a and faction b. the iraqi govt is hoping to play a game of we leave you alone, you leave us alone...the reality is that they should have let the 101st (as i recall) nail them 2 years ago when he was holed up in that mosque...
Hmmm. Brings to mind the Israeli actions of demolishing the homes of the families of the terrorists.
Can we simply "Doze" Sad'r City and remove the terrorist's home.
Al-Sadr and his army of retards should have been killed in March of 2003. Instead, we let this subhuman wart live. He started with about 600 buys. Now he has about 15,000.
This is the price we pay for PC warfare.
The US Administration INSISTS on keeping this bearded pile of sheep squat alive. He and his minions have OPENLY called for resistance to our forces. He is responsible for the deaths of HUNDREDS of our soldiers. We know where he is and what he is doing... AND WE DO NOTHING.
THE REASON AL-SADR IS A PROBLEM IS BECAUSE WE ALLOW HIM TO BE A PROBLEM... WE ***ALLOW** HIM TO KILL AMERICAN SOLDIERS.
Political Correctness is our State Religion.
I will take you up on that bet.
In Sadr City we have seen the creation of an Iranian/Hezbollah sanctuary. Fallujah was a Baathist/al-Qaeda sanctuary.
Over the past two years we have bashed down the Sunni terrorists deciently, but at the same time the US ignored the growing Shia terrorist threat until it blew up reciently.
At least a year ago.
Setup check points around the city and then declare that the people have 24 hours to pack up their things and move out. Then level the city.
Right on all counts.
Malaki and his gang need to get the word: If Saddam hangs and that rat-bas Sadr fries, we leave. Not a day sooner.
But we can't listen to you, because you don't have a degree from Harvard, and we don't pay you $300,000 a year. I mean common sense costs a lot of money. And besides, you need a manicure and a day in the hair salon for the photo op.
President Bush could fire 90% of his staff, log on to FR everyday for a couple of hours, and get 10 times better advice, and save the country tons of money.
without Saddam, Bagdad is just another bend in the river.
Sadr City should be depopulated.
encourage people to return to where they, sunni, Shia, etc,
are a majority.
So why don't we withdraw a majority of our forces and build a superbase in Kurdistan? We should just protect Green Zone but leave rest of Iraq alone.
After all violence is just how those Arabs do "politics".
Because, you are giving the Western Iraqi towns and cities to al-Qaeda and the oil fields of the south to Iran.
You are basically giving steroids to our two biggest enemies in the Middle East.
Let the Iraqi Army get their hands dirty and eliminate Al-Qaeda in western Iraq. It'll take time but they are ruthless enough to get the job done. Especially if we get out of the way.
It takes an Arab approach to solve the problems in Iraq right now.
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