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August 16, 2004

Can you spot the liar?

"They have threatened to blow up the Imam Ali mosque if attacked"

Najaf, Iraq, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The sacred Shiite Imam Ali mosque in Najaf is being held by 25 militants who have booby-trapped it with explosives, CNN reported Monday.

In a written statement, the Interior Ministry said the unidentified group was threatening to blow up the building if it came under attack. Accordingly, the interim Iraqi government has ordered national guard forces not to target the mosque, and not to approach it. U.S. troops are under similar orders.

The mosque houses the tomb of the Prophet Muhammed's cousin and son-in-law.

"It is a conspiracy to commit a big massace"

The chief government negotiator said he decided to quit the talks in Najaf after three fruitless days, but representatives of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said a deal had been all but reached before interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi personally intervened to quash it.

"It is a conspiracy to commit a big massacre," al-Sadr's top negotiator, Sheik Ali Smeisim, told the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television station.

Soon after the talks broke down, a massive Army and Marine force of tanks, Humvees and armored vehicles lined up inside a U.S. military base in Najaf for an assault on the militants, which Allawi reportedly called off.

If you said "Both of them!" I hope you're right. I really hope you're right:

Once again, U.S. armed forces appear on the verge of winning a decisive military victory in Iraq – this time in the holy city of Najaf. And once again, they appear closer to losing the larger wars for a stable and friendly Iraq and for an Islamic world that will cease producing anti-U.S. terrorism.

That is the rapidly growing concern of Middle East and Islamic specialists as U.S. Marines, after a week of fighting, captured virtually all of central Najaf on Thursday, including the home of Mehdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr, and launched a final siege of the Imam Ali mosque, which is considered the world's holiest shrine by some 120 million Shi'ite Muslims....

Shi'ites "worldwide are shocked and outraged over what is going on in Najaf," Imam Moustafa Al-Qazwini, a prominent Shi'ite leader based in California, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. "They consider it an assault on the sanctity of Islam and in particular Shia Islam."

"Any attack on that city will destroy America's future in Iraq completely," said al-Qazwini, who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 but became disillusioned with the occupation after several months of traveling to the occupied nation earlier this year.

To Juan Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan, the fighting of the past week marks a major setback for Washington's larger political goals.

"The credibility of the Allawi government as an independent Iraqi government has been decisively undermined by this," Cole said adding that while much of the Iraqi public was willing to give the interim leader a chance, "he will now be seen as nothing more than an American puppet or, worse, an American agent."

That impression is strengthened by the reemergence of U.S. troops and aircraft in the fighting over the past week, after a conscious effort since Allawi took over in late June to sharply reduce the visibility of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Cole and others noted that Marines' actions have created serious and potentially fatal strains even within the government. Its Shia vice president, Ibrahim Jaafari, who is also leader of the Dawa Party and generally regarded as Iraq's most popular political figure, on Wednesday denounced the presence of U.S. forces in Najaf, while the deputy governor of Najaf province resigned to protest "all the U.S. terrorist operations that they are doing against this holy city."

Why not just honor the Olympic truce? Would waiting a few weeks kill anyone?

In ancient Greece, all fighting had to stop from a week before the games until a week after so that athletes, artists and spectators could travel safely to and from Olympia.

The concept was revived by the modern Games' organizers in 1992 during the war between Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia and endorsed by the UN.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking in Washington on Friday, said the truce appeal was a "noble effort" but sadly it would have no impact on Iraq: The violence was the work of "outlaws and ... former regime elements and ... terrorists who respect no truce, who respect nothing except force."

Posted by Mike at August 16, 2004 07:36 PM

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