Lifting of Sadr City 'siege' divides Iraqis

[ECH1969]

Shiite and Sunni leaders sparred yesterday over a government order to lift US checkpoints around a Baghdad militia stronghold as data showed the number of Iraqis killed in October may have hit a record high.

US troops lifted roadblocks around the Shiite slum district of Sadr City on Tuesday when Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki ordered them out, flexing his political muscle after a week of public friction with Washington ahead of US elections.

Supporters of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr celebrated in the streets of Sadr City, bastion of his Mehdi Army. An aide hailed the end of a "barbaric siege" begun to help find a kidnapped US soldier possibly being held by militiamen.

But Iraq's Sunni vice-president slammed the move, saying it could spell an end to a lull in sectarian death squad violence, which the once dominant Sunni minority blames on the Mehdi Army.

http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iraq/10079343.html

[ovidsen]

1. The plot thickens

The BushBots say that giving Iraqi PM Malaki the authority to lift checkpoints around Sadr City shows Iraqis and the world that the US is not an occupying nation and that Malaki's the big kahuna.

They conveniently ignore the fact that by backing the pro-Shiite Malaki, they're helping unleash all the Medhi Army fighters of al Sadr. They don't like Sunnis, who will fight back with their own death squads. That's when they're not fighting eachother. Think Somalia.

And then there's that American who was kidnapped Sunday

Monday, October 30, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A Baghdad woman who says she's the mother-in-law of a missing US soldier says family members tried to stop the kidnapping.
http://www.newschannel5.tv/News/Other/4521/Mother-in-law-says-relatives-tried-to-stop-kidnapping

But wait! He's married to an Iraqi woman!

(CBS/AP) A U.S. soldier kidnapped last week in Baghdad was married to an Iraqi college student and was with his wife and her family when hooded gunmen dragged him out of a house, bound his hands and threw him in the back seat of a white Mercedes, a woman who identified herself as his mother-in-law said Monday.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/30/iraq/main2136752.shtml

And where were we looking for this guy and his wife?

October 30, 2006 · Residents of Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, complain they are under siege. The U.S. military has installed roadblocks in the area as part of their search for a missing U.S. Soldier.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6404923

And now suddenly the US pulls out from this search?

There's something really fishy going on here.

[Crim_n al]

3. Hooded gunmen who held themselves like Marines

and spoke American?

The military will do anything to prevent soldiers intermingling with the "savages".
Can't have the troops going native. They might get a different perspective on things.

[wholetruth00]

2. Not to mention dividing Americans over leaving a soldier behind enemy lines