Top Aide to Sadr Outlines Vision of a U.S.-Free Iraq

[Barrett808]

Top Aide to Sadr Outlines Vision of a U.S.-Free Iraq
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A18

NAJAF, Iraq -- In a shabby but spotless living room in the holy city of Najaf, a top deputy of Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr quietly sketched out his vision of the Iraq to come, after the Americans withdraw.

First, "there will be a civil war," said the aide, Mustafa Yaqoubi, as his three young children wandered in and out of the room. The rising violence and rivalries under the American occupation make a shaking-out all but inevitable once foreign forces go, Yaqoubi said. "I expect it."

"No matter the number of people who would lose their lives, it is better than now," he added. "It would be better than the Americans staying."

When the tumult ends, the Sadr aide said, Iraq's Shiite majority will finally be able to claim its due, long resisted by the Americans -- freedom to usher in a Shiite religious government that Yaqoubi said would be moderate and perhaps comparable in some ways to Iran's. The bespectacled, bearded cleric's mild tone buffered his talk of the blood that would have to be spilled to achieve this goal. No matter when the Americans withdraw, "the first year of transition, it will be worse," Yaqoubi warned. "After that, it will gradually improve."

Yaqoubi speaks as one of two or three longtime intimates of Sadr, the young heir of a revered Shiite clerical family. Sadr's rough-edged, strongly anti-American street movement of poor, largely uneducated Shiites has burgeoned into one of the strongest political and armed forces in Iraq.

(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091101337_pf.html

[ECH1969]

1. So Sadr kills all the Sunnis in a civil war

and then kills his Shia opposition and rules Iraq?

It is a workable plan.

[acmavm]

2. No shit. And they got rid of Saddam because he was a cruel and

murderous despot.

[happyslug]

3. No, both sides fight to some sort of stalemate...

and then both sides work out some sort of compromise on how to rule Iraq as a whole. That is how Sadr is thinking, probably end up with some sort of Shiite majority Government rule while the bureaucracy will remain controlled by the Sunni educated elite. Some sort of protection of Sunni and Kurdish minority rights will be worked out (Mostly by leaving the Sunni and Kurds in control of areas they control at the end of the Fighting). This is how most Civil Wars ends, with a deal among the combatants that divide up the country. Some people win some and lose some but all get to a point where further fighting will gain them nothing and thus some sort of deal is made.

[ECH1969]

4. Iraq's future ruler

[VegasWolf]

5. Ahh! a US-free Iraq! Halliburton's, err Bush's, nightmare. nt

[CollegeDUer]

6. Iraq's new Ho Chi Minh

The guy that will make us come back to "re-liberate" the country again, so we can have anohter guy come to power so we can liberate again, and again, and again...

[LynnTheDem]

7. As the Iranian minister said; first bush invaded Afghanistan and set up

a theocracy there; then bush invaded Iraq and set up a theocracy in Iraq. There's no need to invade Iran, they already have a theocracy!

Well done, bush, you ignorant stupid MFer.