Good to read what the world thinks too...
In particular pass on to those who LIE like Cheney does . And in particular to those who ONLY see and attack Democrats and Democratic candidates for 2008; and dont want to say anything about the jokers running on the Repub party like Romney or Guiliani. I totally 100 pct agree with free speech and jokes at Hillary's expense but how about Romney "FORMERLY vocally pro choice now errr I think if you will pro life pro NRA pro gun HUNTER WHO HUNTED VARMINTS a week after he said he has been a hunter all his life? OR Guiliani THREE TIME MARRIED CATHOLIC Who committed Adultery in the Governor;s mansion ? or McCain? sheesh. Why are Republican Okies so one sided in their humor or insults and cannot be more balanced? Hillary was called carpet bagger once for moving from Arkansas to NY to get elected; ok I agree but what do you say about the REpub field and jokers like McCain who went to a market in Iraq with 100 bodyguards and claimed it was safe like an American market?
ANYWAY this is about Iraq..... Narcissistic Americans dont like to read other op-eds. So here is one. EDUCATE yourself even this late with 3800 dead.
OPINION
Why Moqtada al-Sadr is the most dangerous man in Iraq
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - please don't label them as Shiites - took to the streets on Monday, demanding that the US forces end their occupation and get out of their beloved country.
Imagine that we go into a house uninvited and yet the occupants tolerate our presence for a few days and then tell us politely to leave, and we don't. They then yell at us, "GET OUT". If we still don't go, we must be either insane or thugs or even robbers.
The Iraqis on Monday responded to a call from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr with a demonstration of people power and asked George W. Bush, the intruder, to leave Iraq. Will the democracy-exporting America take note of this? The American people with conscience — among them the anti-war activists — will. But Bush says he won't leave Iraq and plans to bring in more troops to assert his authority in a country where he is not welcome.
How can one expect Bush to respect the will of the Iraqi people when he does not bow to the will of the people of the United States, which he governs? It was only five months ago that the Americans overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party, which supported the war on Iraq and voted in the Democrats who campaigned on an anti-war platform at the mid-term congressional elections.
What's more, the president of the United States, with utter disrespect for their verdict, is now threatening to veto a congressional bill that tags an Iraq withdrawal timetable to the money that he seeks in order to carry out his war in Iraq — to kill those Iraqis who are fighting an invading army, who believe occupation is humiliation and who resist the plunder of their national wealth.
The height of spin is when Bush and his hawkish men and women see all resistance to foreign occupation as terrorism — and they used their spin-doctoring skills also to devalue the massive anti-American demonstration in Najaf, Iraq, on Monday.
This was how White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe responded to the massive show of people power: "Iraq, four years on, is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions".
Two weeks ago, on April Fools' Day, Senator John McCain, a Republican Party presidential hopeful for the 2008 elections, and three other congressmen walked through a central Baghdad market street and claimed that he was able to walk free because Iraq was a much safer place today, thanks to the Americans. What he did not tell the Americans was that every building on the street was screened and kept under watch by US soldiers and there were armoured Humvees behind and in front of the delegation, and US military helicopters hovered over their heads.
When will Bush, McCain and their ilk stop thinking that the Americans are fools? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, their spin does not work; and it has not worked since Bush, like an amateur con artist, made the very first move to link Iraq with the war on terror.
The White House refuses to see the "get out" message in the one-million-Iraqi march. It wasn't a rally to express their gratitude towards Bush for the freedom of expression they were exercising. If so, they would have waved the US flag instead of burning it. Granted, during the Saddam Hussein tyranny such gatherings were unheard of. But people were secure then. The Shiites and the Sunnis lived together and worked together and even fought together for the country during the eight year war with neighbouring Iran. But today, the Shiites and the Sunnis are being manouevred into fighting a fratricidal civil war so that the United States may continue its occupation of Iraq.
What a demonstrator told a reporter summed up the feelings of nearly one-million people who joined the rally and millions of others who could not join.
"The occupier raised slogans saying Iraq is free, Iraq is liberated. What freedom? What liberation? There is nothing but destruction. We do not want their liberation and their presence. We tell them to get out of our land," said Ahmed al-Mayahie, who joined the rally from Iraq's southern port city of Basra.
The Moqtada al-Sadr-inspired protests had the support of Iraq's Sunnis as well. Abdul Qadir al-Daim, a member of the powerful Sunni political bloc, told a reporter: "This demonstration is a friendly message to unite Iraqis on one common issue and that is the end of the occupation."
Al-Sadr, who is now in hiding, has been opposing the US forces from day one of the invasion. He believed in Shiite-Sunni unity — in an undivided Iraq — until things went out of control with the bombing of the al-Askari mosque in Samara, one of the holiest Shiite mosques, in February last year. Before that, the Shiites had been restrained from retaliating against bomb blasts purported to have been carried out by Sunni extremists on Shiite civilian targets. After every attack on a Shiite civilian target, the Shiites would turn their anger at the United States, and rightly so.
But the Samara mosque attack was the limit. It compelled al-Sadr to loosen his hold on his Mahdi Army militia, who went berserk. Whoever was behind that dastardly act had achieved their aim - pitting the Shiites against the Sunnis and weakening the resistance to the occupation. But now, al-Sadr has spoken. If he rises above sectarianism, as he had during the early days of the occupation, he will be the one leader who could take Iraq out of its shame and deliver its people from the yoke of neo-colonial occupation. Bush and his capitalist hawks profiting from the war in Iraq know that. That is why they call al-Sadr the most dangerous man in Iraq. Dangerous? To whom? Not to those one million Iraqis who responded to his call on Monday and joined the protest.
He is dangerous because he stands between corporate America's Big Oil and the oil that belongs to the Iraqi people. He is dangerous because he opposes the privatization of Iraq. He is dangerous because he rejected the splitting up of Iraq — or the balkanization of Iraq - along sectarian lines. He even opposed the federal constitution of Iraq, though unsuccessfully. He is dangerous because his Mahdi Army could rise as a proxy for Iran in the event the United States attacks Iran's nuclear sites.
So the United States is going after al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Baghdad's Sadr City and in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. That's how Bush is responding to Monday's one-million-strong march against the occupation. And the puppet Nouri al-Maliki government does not even protest when US troops, hunting down Mahdi militia in Diwaniyah, warn the Iraqi policemen that if they come out, they will be shot. And why should they warn the policemen? Because they support al-Sadr. Didn't we see Iraqi policemen shouting anti-American slogans at Monday's rally?
The ongoing US military operation in Diwaniyah is multi-purpose. It is not only aimed at hunting down Mahdi militia but also at strengthening the hand of the SCIRI — the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group whose members sought refuge in Iran during Saddam's oppression but which is now seen as pro-occupation.
The divide-and-rule strategy of the colonialists has not changed. The strategy appears to consist not only of pitting the Sunnis against the Shiites but also pitting Shiite groups against one another.
Will al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army survive the US onslaught? Reports from Diwaniyah say the Mahdi militia have gone underground and are offering little resistance. Even in the Sadr City crackdown, the Mahdi militia did not fight back. They slipped out of the city.
This is the militia that in 2004 gave a brave fight to the invading US and British armies in Najaf. His militia members are asking, "Why is Syed Moqtada al-Sadr not giving us orders to fight the US in Diwaniyah?" Probably he has a plan. He is saving his men for a bigger fight.
