Iraq: US Facing Opponents it Trained

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"They made a very big mistake in Fallujah. They try to say they were fighting foreign Arabs and terrorists like Zarqawi but they were not -- just regular Iraqis in their houses who were tired of the occupation."

Majid al-Samarai, columnist for an Iraqi newspaper


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0426-01.htm

Inter Press Service

Iraq: US Facing Opponents it Trained
U.S. calculations that it would train a new army in Iraq have gone badly wrong. It is now up against the very people it trained.

by Aaron Glantz

BAGHDAD - A U.S. military helicopter flies over the municipal building in the predominantly Shia Baghdad neighborhood Kadamiya. A U.S.- trained Iraqi soldier stands guard.

The guard says he signed up in the new Iraqi Army to keep Baghdad safe from looters and thieves, but that if the Mehdi Army of the Shia leader Muqtada al- Sadr who has taken on the United States tries to take the municipal building, he will abandon his post.

He carries a photograph of Muqtada al-Sadr and his father Ayatolla Mohammed Sadik al-Sadr in his wallet.

The soldier explains he was imprisoned by Saddam's regime in 1979 -- the same year the government executed Muqtada al-Sadr's uncle Mohammed Bakir al-Sadr for refusing to support the ruling Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party.
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