McClatchy: U.S.: Shiite militias are the main threat to Iraq (NOT al Qaida)

[babylonsister]

U.S.: Shiite militias are the main threat to Iraq
By Mark Seibel and Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers


BAGHDAD — Despite President Bush's recent insistence that al Qaida in Iraq is the principal cause of this country's violence, senior American military officers here say Shiite Muslim militias are a bigger problem, and one that will persist even if al Qaida is defeated.

"The longer-term threat to Iraq is potentially the Shiite militias," one senior military officer said, echoing concerns that other American officials raised in recent interviews with McClatchy Newspapers.

Military officers hail the fact that violence is down as evidence that their campaign against al Qaida in Iraq is succeeding. But there's no sign of reconciliation between Sunni Muslims and Shiites, the rationale the Bush administration cites for increasing the number of U.S. troops in the country.

The Shiite Mahdi Army militia continues to drive Sunni residents from neighborhoods in Baghdad, a development that one American officer called "disappointing." Shiite politicians show little sympathy for the expelled Sunnis or interest in stopping the expulsions. In interviews, they argued that the drive against Sunnis is a justified response to Sunni campaigns to drive Shiites from their neighborhoods, a position that American military officers reject.

American officials say they're hopeful about the recent decision by some Sunni insurgent groups to cooperate with U.S. troops to defeat al Qaida in Iraq. But some of America's new Sunni allies warn that once they've disposed of the religious extremists in their midst, they'll return to battling rival Shiites — and American occupiers.

Meanwhile, Sunni politicians are boycotting the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and threatening to withdraw permanently if 12 demands aren't met, including an end to Shiite militias' infiltration of Iraqi security forces.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18567.html

[Tom Joad]

1. US imperialist designs are main threat to Middle East.

[MADem]

3. Imperialist? Some might say we're the contracted, mercenary army for the House of Saud

Not imperialist--servants. Paid in oil. It's why we don't pay six bucks a gallon for gas like so many others do.

[Tom Joad]

5. Don't let the US elite off the hook. The US has been an imperialist power for some time.

From Mark Twain:

I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

Later Mark Twain signed a statement that read in part:

" steps be taken at once to stop … the killing of prisoners, the
shooting without trial of suspected persons, the use of torture, … the
wanton destruction of private property, and everywhere the barbarous
methods of waging war, which this nation from its infancy has ever
condemned.”

[MADem]

6. Ya gotta ask yourself, though

If you happen to be sitting on the sidelines, there, watching the game from right behind the Saudi bleachers:

How many Saudis, loyal to the House of Saud, the Protectors of the Holy Places at Mekkah and Medina, have died pushing back against the Shi'a menance that threatens the safety of the Guardians and the maintenance of the Holy Places in the hands of those who practice the One True Religion, and not an abberent and untruthful distortion of the One True Faith?

From that team's perspective, anyway.


The answer is NONE. They had their rented and paid-for US Army do the dying for them. And it continues to this day.

When you sweat and grunt and die for a perfumed master in a well-ironed, gleaming white thobe of expensive fabric, while that richly-swaddled guy waves his bejeweled hand and orders your people to prosecute a war in a specific fashion, against a specific group, in exchange for something of value, that's not the catbird seat the grunters and bleeders are in. IMO.

Mark Twain was a great guy, but he's been dead awhile. Times change.

Just sayin'...

[MADem]

2. That's what the Saudis said to Big Dick several months ago... NT

[LSK]

4. to anyone who has read the ISG Report or numerous intel reports

This is a "no duh!"