Sunday, April 08, 2007

Pushback

Al Sadr and his militiamen and death squads have been lying low ever since the beginning of Preznut Bush's Iraq war surge.

The decrease in death squad killings and militia violence has allowed the Bush administration and its various apologists to declare the surge policy is helping to bring order and security to Baghdad.

In a very narrow sense, there is some truth to that statement. Violence in Baghdad has decreased (though it has increased elsewhere around Iraq) and death squad killings are down (to about 10 a day from a 100 a day.) But only because most of Sadr's guys are temporarily sitting on their hands.

Until today, that is:

BAGHDAD - The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen on Sunday to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq’s army and police should join him in defeating “your archenemy.” The U.S. military announced the weekend deaths of 10 American soldiers, including six killed on Sunday.

Security remained so tenuous in the capital on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. capture of Baghdad that Iraq’s military declared a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in the capital from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated Monday as a holiday, just a day after it had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.

Among the 10 U.S. deaths announced Sunday were three soldiers killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling south of Baghdad; one killed in an attack south of the capital; and two who died of combat wounds sustained north of the capital, in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces. On Saturday, the military said, four U.S. soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala.

...

At least 47 people were killed or found dead in violence Sunday, including 17 execution victims dumped in the capital.

Al-Sadr commands an enormous following among Iraq’s majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government. The statement Sunday carried his seal and was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where the cleric called for an enormous demonstration to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall.

“You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don’t walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,” the al-Sadr statement said.

He urged his followers not to attack fellow Iraqis but to turn all their efforts on American forces.

10 soldiers killed this weekend.

35 American military personnel and 6 British military personnel killed so far this month.

It's only April 8th.

And now Sadr's telling his thugs to stop sitting on their hands and get back to killing Americans.

In the meanwhile here at home Bushie and Cheney and St. John McCain and Holy Joe Lieberman and the rest of the Republican war apologists are making believe like the surge is working and it's war critics who are setting the U.S. up for defeat.

Uh, huh.

Sure the surge is working.

Increased U.S. casualties, increased Iraqi casualties, violence spreading outward from Baghdad, tenuous security in Baghdad...

...sounds like a Mission Accomplished to me.

Geez.

How do these people sleep at night?

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