In April 2004 Sadr began an uprising during the transition between 1AD and 1CD. 1AD was extended and elements of this division more or less chased him and his merry men all through Iraq, crushing them at every engagement. He attempted to use the holly shrines in Karbala as protection and after we peeled him even from there, he fled to Najef and then Kufa. The orders were simple “Dead or alive,” dead being preferred. This was also the time of the “transition of authority” to the Iraqi’s and Bremmer didn’t want to deal with the mess, because we really were creating a mess of cities, bad press, etc etc etc. We were eventually told to stand down, even though we had parked a track pad on his neck by then. Sadr screaming that he’ll negotiate, and the fact that Bremmer wanted the intense fighting to stop caused us to be called off, a decision that looked good in the short run. You need to understand that in April 2004 when this began we actually dropped a few 500 pound bombs in Baghdad; this wasn’t small what was going on and Bremmer didn’t want this sort of attention. Of course negotiations never lead to anything since they’re nothing but stalling or get out of jail free cards for someone like Sadr and eventually he began starting problems again, but Bremmer was long gone.
In 2003 without getting into to much detail, we had him literally in our sights and we could have taken him out, but at that time he wasn’t the big problem yet, and the feeling was that killing him would cause more problems than just dealing with him. Some even thought that we might be able to bring him into the process, which of course today appears like a joke. Sadr wasn’t immediately that big of a problem, but because of his fame (Through his father) the thought was that killing him would cause a giant $hit storm among the Shia population. Let’s just say, that in 2003, he and many others didn’t really know what we could do, in so far as targeting and the capabilities of certain ordinance and at that time he exposed himself in ways where had we wanted too, we could have lit him up. The point is that we had him in our sights on several occasions, but political considerations both internal to Iraq, our allies and ourselves have caused us to back off, which has only allowed this disease “Sadr,” to live on and do more damage.
You need to understand that while the Iraqi’s are taking control of the show; in 2003 – 2004 we were the show in town.
Thanks for your lesson. I thought that even back in 2004, that Sistani had been one of the major reasons that Sadr was not blasted. Sounds like I may be wrong about that, from your account of events, though I was aware of much of what you just wrote.