Why is Muqtada al-Sadr still breathing?

A few words from that linked article:

The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged the Iraqi army and police to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate on pushing American forces out of the country, according to a statement issued Sunday.

The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday - a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy," the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified.

In the statement, al-Sadr - who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government - also encouraged his followers to attack only American forces, not fellow Iraqis.

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Why? Because we are trying to wage a polite war.

And Iran. Time to get nasty.

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It shouldn't take that much effort to deal with Al-Sadr. One small team, ala The Unit, Delta Force, etc., should be able to handle Al-Sadr permanently. It is well past time for that to have happened.

Either that or a US Navy S.E.A.L incursion. Either one would be sufficient!

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Ah, dreams of "Rainbow Six" . . .

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I Blame the Liberals and the MSM for the mess Iraq has become.. they support the enemies of our country, if we try to fight the war the way it should be fought, meaning nasty no holds barred, the liberal bleeding hearts pukes will vomit all over the t.v. and news so our enemies can use their words as propaganda. If we target Al- Sadr the Liberal pukes will accuse us of war crimes again giving our enemies more propaganda to use against us.

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I Blame the Liberals and the MSM for the mess Iraq has become.. they support the enemies of our country, if we try to fight the war the way it should be fought, meaning nasty no holds barred, the liberal bleeding hearts pukes will vomit all over the t.v. and news so our enemies can use their words as propaganda. If we target Al- Sadr the Liberal pukes will accuse us of war crimes again giving our enemies more propaganda to use against us.

There is a difference in fighting a war, and then fighting a war honorably.

Fighting it "no holds barred," does nothing but inflame things. Sure, we'll wipe out more of them, but then we'll have more, and more as followers see us slaughter them. Their mindset will drive them into seeing us as the aggressors. It'll just perpetuate the endless cycle.

Heh, that's crap MM, "liberal bleeding heart pukes." While I respect your right to say what you want...is calling people names really a good thing to do? I'm a bleeding heart liberal; my girlfriend's a bleeding heart liberal, but we don't call you names; neither of us, and you know why? Because we're respectful. We're both bleeding heart liberals because we care, a lot; and just because we choose that title, that moniker, doesn't justify being lambasted. You don't like it when you're called thins, right?

~L

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Also...

Why blame us and the msm? Why not blame the gov't, and the terrorists? The gov't isn't willing to fund it well enough, the gov't is pulling petty shit with the troops, etc... The terrorists, well we know what they're doing...

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There is a difference in fighting a war, and then fighting a war honorably.

Wrong! War is death and destruction. There is honor in personal combat. There is no such thing as fighting a war Honorably. IN the words of Patton. "you dont win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Why blame us and the msm?

The finger points to those who parrot the enemy. Dont like it? Stop sounding like Al Qaeda.

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The finger points to those who parrot the enemy. Dont like it? Stop sounding like Al Qaeda.

The mess in Iraq. Hmmm, ever heard of personal responisbility. I.e. you're responsible for the mess you make?

The only reason that there is a mess in Iraq, is because of:

1) OUR gov't.

2) OUR military

3) The terrorists

Those are the people to blame for the mess in Iraq. Not those who choose to criticize the war. God forbid we blame those responsible...

...instead we blame others.

Yeah...right...

Wrong! War is death and destruction. There is honor in personal combat. There is no such thing as fighting a war Honorably. IN the words of Patton. "you dont win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Bullshit. You can fight a war and take care to limit casualties, which, our gov't hasn't done. There is such a thing as fighting a war, and not humiliating detainees. There is such thing as fighting a war, and treating people humanely. Bunker busters? Shrapnel weapons? Gassings? WE can be better than the terrorists, or else we become just as bad as them, hold ourselves to a better fucking standard.
THAT is what I'm talking about.

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First let me say that you have no concept of warfare. You seem to be interested in only the very highest ideals of our country and that is not a bad thing but it needs to be tempered with reality.

Bullshit. You can fight a war and take care to limit casualties, which, our gov't hasn't done.

America has been doing its best to limit noncombatant casualties. Rarely have we killed civilians and never as an effort have we killed noncombatants. This is living up to your goals and ideals even though you do not wish to acknowledge it.

There is such a thing as fighting a war, and not humiliating detainees.

You can’t blame the government because of the actions of a few. It would be like saying the Mayor of New York City condones murder because a few bad cops broke the law and killed people. The people responsible were arrested and punished for what they did so it was not condoned by our government.

There is such thing as fighting a war, and treating people humanely. Bunker busters?

Killing is what war is about. Kill enough of the enemy and they give up ending the war. Germany said they would fight to the last man but the last man was Hitler then they gave up. Bunker busters kill the enemy and that is a good thing.

WE can be better than the terrorists, or else we become just as bad as them, hold ourselves to a better fucking standard.
THAT is what I'm talking about.

The purpose of war is to break things and kill people till one side gives up. That is how wars are fought and won. We have high ideals in this country but it is tempered with reality. Sure it would be nice to negotiate with the terrorist and make nice and be good friends after. In the real world that would mean that the other side believes in the same thing. At this point in time the terrorist are not in the mood to negotiate and the thought of negotiation to them is a sign of our weakness meaning that they are winning and we are losing so why negotiate with people that are losers? That is what I am talking about.

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The only reason that there is a mess in Iraq, is because of:

1) OUR gov't.

2) OUR military

3) The terrorists

Right....Saddam was the benevolent ruler. He handed out candy bars to children in the Bagdad streets and built homes for the homeless. He was a misunderstood genius.

Now I understand why you had such a boner for Jennifer, Lucas. You and she were cut from the same far left out of touch with reality cloth.

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America has been doing its best to limit noncombatant casualties. Rarely have we killed civilians and never as an effort have we killed noncombatants. This is living up to your goals and ideals even though you do not wish to acknowledge it.

Oh, provide the evidence in how we've done our best...alright?

You can’t blame the government because of the actions of a few. It would be like saying the Mayor of New York City condones murder because a few bad cops broke the law and killed people. The people responsible were arrested and punished for what they did so it was not condoned by our government.

I blame them for not taking action, or not taking enough action , whether before it happened or after. You can fix something so it's good, then there is fixing something so that it doesn't happen again. You know what i mean?

Right....Saddam was the benevolent ruler. He handed out candy bars to children in the Bagdad streets and built homes for the homeless. He was a misunderstood genius.

Now I understand why you had such a boner for Jennifer, Lucas. You and she were cut from the same far left out of touch with reality cloth.

First off, you know what i meant; I was talking about the *current* mess.

Secondly, you're just picking a fight.

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Here's an idea:

We pull out our troops. Get them the hell out of iraq. Pull our our troops from non-essential areas/bases. Bring them home, and fortify OUR country. Lets get our country taken care of before we go out and help others. Education system, timber payments, etc... Lets deal with our country, OUR people.

We don't belong in Iraq, we never did.

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Implying that the US military has targeted civilians makes you an object of my contempt Lucas.

If you spouted that last pile of feces to my face, I would probably have to punch you in the face. (As would a large number of my co-workers)

You should have stayed gone.

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~SSG~

First off, I never said, implied or declared that we have puposely targeted civilians. What we have done, is while going after the 'bad guys,' we've had casualties that were not needed. Example: Kakarak, Afghanistan

WWW Link

Think about it...guesses of casualties (non combat) range from tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands? C'mon, we can do better than that.

We need to get organized better. We need to start going after the terrorists directly, not just willy nilly. Examples: (Alleged)

~the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib

~the use of white phosphorus

~the murder of 24 civilians in Haditha, including women and children

~the murder of 11 civilians in Ishaqi, including five children

~the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man named Hashim Ibrahim Awad

~the gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and the murder of her family, in Mahmudiyah

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Fighting it "no holds barred," does nothing but inflame things.

Truly spoken as one who completely misunderstands warfare in all its facets.

Here's the deal. We've f***ed things up in Iraq, no question about it. But I see it as a combination of two things as to why - first, MM is right. The 24-hour newscycle makes fighting a war almost impossible, from both sides, liberal and conservative. When each and every death is painted before you in all its sordid details, it takes away the will to fight in the public proper.

Second - Rummy was (and I'm sure continues to be, even not on the job anymore) a stupid f***. If he hadn't lowballed the military into using insufficient forces to complete the task at hand, we wouldn't even still be there. I've watched video of the congress hearings prior to the war, and here are these intelligent generals saying "we'll need three, maybe four hundred thousand troops to get this done" and Rummy just starts pulling numbers WAY too low (like one hundred forty-five or one hundred fifty thousand) straight out of his ass. And the generals just look over at him like, "what the crap are you talking about, man?" He didn't listen to Powell or the most common-sense Powell Doctrine - if you're gonna fight something, use overwhelming force to achieve the objective. That's it, man; just blow the ever-loving f*** out of everything and have enough troops to get the damn job done already.

*Steps off soapbox, disappears into the crowd*

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Your blog made interesting reading, but you seem to be far from the reality of Iraq. In fact the Sadr Army and the Mahdi Party have 5 cabinet ministers in the present government and nothing can be done without the support of the Sadr Militia.

In fact the US and her allies tried to incite the Sunnis to terrorism against the Shias by outsourcing the killing of the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein to the Mehdi Army ed by Sadr.

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There is such thing as fighting a war, and treating people humanely. Bunker busters? Shrapnel weapons? Gassings?

You are not only contradicting yourself, you dont seem to know what war is. War is nor treating people. Peace is in treating people. War is killing people and rendering the enemy incapable of killing you. You have a lot to learn. The first would be to stick to one subject instead of trying to combine 2 unrelated ones.

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We need to get organized better. We need to start going after the terrorists directly, not just willy nilly. Examples: (Alleged)

You just stepped into SSG's trap again. So we lock up every elected official because some bad apple under their jurisdiction has committed a crime? Oh that would be great! A nation in prison!

Have you ever heard of something called personal responsibility? Apparently not.

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Oh, provide the evidence in how we've done our best...alright?

We have spent billions to develop laser and then GPS guided munitions so we would not have to carpet bomb whole cities to take out a single building. Now when civilians are hurt it is by accident rather than collateral damage or the cost of doing business.

Now provide for me evidence of your allegation that our government has not tried to limit casualties.

I blame them for not taking action, or not taking enough action , whether before it happened or after. You can fix something so it's good, then there is fixing something so that it doesn't happen again. You know what i mean?

Back when Mr. Reagan was president through to Mr. Bush the operations orders were simple, find out who wants to do us harm and make them go away. Hunt down and remove those that have hurt us that we did not find out about until after the fact. Yes, we had terror attacks but they were all outside our nation until Mr. Clinton shut down the program. Could we have prevented 9/11 and the other terror attacks on our soil? Yes! Did it work? Yes, until the program was shut down and they were allowed to build and fester and plot to hurt us at home. You see we did it your way and the result was three attacks on the WTC, one attack on the pentagon, one on Congress, and one on the White House, the last two failed. Action was taken, action was not taken, now action is being taken again.

I read your link and I noticed the same line that most terrorist groups use. "Mostly women and childern dead." They used that same lie in Lenanon until they filmed the terrorist being halled out and dumped away from the site and women and children reciently dead being dug up and brought out to be burried again. You seem to pay attention to the news and you have not noticed this?

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We need to get organized better. We need to start going after the terrorists directly, not just willy nilly. Examples: (Alleged)

Over 30 attempts to attack the U.S. in America stopped, more have probably happened but that is all the government will admit to.
I know you are focused on Iraq and Afghanistan so you may not have noticed the attacks on terrorist by U. S. forces around the globe. You might have noticed the reports in the NYT on how we were tracking down terrorist that call the U. S. did you think it stopped at their phone messages?
Terrorist being hindered by our refusal to deal with states that sponsor terrorists and the effect it is having on their economies.
You may have noticed in the NYT where we were tracking and tracing terrorist by their bank transactions. Did you think that our government was just placing NSF on their accounts and leaving it at that?
Oh wait because it was published in the papers we can’t do those things as effectively any more because now they know what we are doing.
This is a coordinated attack on their entire network and has been going on since the week after the attacks on 9/11 of which the military actions are only a small part.

~the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib

Not government sanctioned actions. The people responsible for the actions are currently inmates of the federal penal system. What has helped the enemy was the publishing of old news as new so it could inflame people to believe that we are doing such things under government sanction.

~the use of white phosphorus

A weapon used since WWI by every nation why is it only America that is bad for using it?

~the murder of 24 civilians in Haditha, including women and children

I am sorry I don't know this case please bring me up to date. I am unaware of the government sanciton that allowed this to happen without someone being punished.

~the murder of 11 civilians in Ishaqi, including five children

I am sorry I don't know this case please bring me up to date. I am unaware of the government sanciton that allowed this to happen without someone being punished.

the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man named Hashim Ibrahim Awad

I am sorry I don't know this case please bring me up to date. I am unaware of the government sanciton that allowed this to happen without someone being punished.

~the gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and the murder of her family, in Mahmudiyah

I am unaware of the government sanciton that allowed this to happen without someone being punished.

Wait a minute! These are isolated incidents where the people involved have or are being punished as you read this. None of it was sanctioned by the military, or our leaders in government. Look at the invasion of Kuwait, rape and murder on a wholesale level and they were in country for months. We have been in country for 4 years and you come up with four instances of abuse? Saddam’s son did that much in a single day to his own people. So out of the 60k people killed so far you have documented 35 or so were murders by our service people. In WWII there were thousands of rapes and murders in the UK while we were waiting for D-Day! Also not sanctioned by our government and most were hung for it. I would say that the numbers are quite low, punishment for the guilty is swift, and the leadership is keeping a tight hand on what is going on.

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I am unaware of the government sanciton that allowed this to happen without someone being punished.

The same outcome as Abu Graib. The culprits are either serving time, or on trial. I know he wants to think that Bush authorized these acts, but that is just the democrat talking points. And he wonders why we lump democrats in with Al Jazeera.

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America has been doing its best to limit noncombatant casualties. Rarely have we killed civilians and never as an effort have we killed noncombatants. This is living up to your goals and ideals even though you do not wish to acknowledge it.

Oh, provide the evidence in how we've done our best...alright?

YOU do the homework! Start by looking at all the "smart munitions" we use on a daily basis!

~the use of white phosphorus

We do NOT ever use this agent against humans!

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We do NOT ever use this agent against humans!

Not true. We have used this stuff on people. It is not a nice thing but it is effective. We used it in Vietnam and Korea as well as WWII and WWI. I don't think we have used it in Afghanistan or Iraq.

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Far as I am concerned there are no off limits tools of warfare.. too bad if someone thinks willie peter is too cruel, do not start a war then. same for ABC WARFARE in all its guises. If you are going to fight a war the gloves come off and people die on both sides, I just want to see many many more people on the other side die as cruely as possible so they will quit!!

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If you are going to fight a war the gloves come off and people die on both sides, I just want to see many many more people on the other side die as cruely as possible so they will quit!!

That's the basics of warfare.

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Why is Muqtada al-Sadr still breathing?

... much less still speaking?!