US, British forces battle Mehdi Army in Baghdad, Basra

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, May 26 (Reuters) - U.S. and British forces battled Mehdi Army fighters in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra after their leader, Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, made a rare public appearance and called on U.S. troops to get out of Iraq.

Five gunmen were killed in an air strike during a pre-dawn raid on Saturday in the cleric's Sadr City stronghold in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A militant leader suspected of ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guards was captured.

In the southern oil hub of Basra, the British military said "a number" of militia fighters were killed in an air strike overnight after they attacked British troops with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machineguns.

The attacks were believed to be in retaliation for the killing of the top Mehdi Army commander in the city on Friday by British-backed Iraqi special forces, the British military said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL648015.htm

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Ruh roh. How are the supply convoys doing?

Still having a bit of a food shortage in the green zone and at the other Big Ass Bases?

[SpiralHawk]

2. "We are well supplied with caviar, sir." - Republicon fatcat War Profiteers

"So you citizens can just sit down and shut up. Oh year, don't forget: Big BushCo loves you."

- Republicon fatcat War Profiteers

[Bigmack]

3. This story shows exactly what...

the US is up against. We think that just because the attention span of the Murikans is about 15 seconds, that the rest of the world is like us. The factions in Iraq are still settling old grudges from 600 years ago.

They will never quit.

[dave_p]

4. Crap

BushCo created this mess. Iraqis have lived together for centuries under Turkish, British and Iraqi rule. It took US occupation to unleash this violence.

If you read the news you'd see that Sadr just offered a deal with Sunni opponents of the occupation. That's probably why his Shia supporters are under US attack.

[Bigmack]

6. I'm not absolving Dumbya...

I'm just pointing out the differences in culture.

The only reason the Sunni and Shi'ia weren't at each others' throats was that the Turks, Brits, and Saddam crushed all that internal stuff. Tito did the same for then-Yugoslavia. When the occupiers leave... the fun begins!

If you think that Sadr and the Sunni are going to kiss and make up, you've forgotten the origins of their split. It's not ethnocentrism on my part to say that revenge... blood revenge... is a big part of the internal fighting in Iraq.

Dumbya just stuck us into that miserable situation and gave both (actually there's lots of small factions) sides somebody else to hate.

I'm open to argument... after all, I couldn't ever imagine Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams proclaiming peace together. It seems to me, tho, that the Iraqi factions make the Irish look like pussies.

[dave_p]

7. It's not quite so straightforward

The Shia-Sunni divide was heavily influenced by external factors - Iran's proximity in past centuries and again now, and Washington's policy of regime change from 1990. But peace was the order of the day for most of the period even with the Sunni minority dominating government. That was why the British carried on the arrangement.

The role of vendettas in all this is easy to exaggerate: Lebanon suffered from decades of the phenomenon (it still largely determines the positions of Jumblatt and Frangieh), but that didn't stop politicians agreeing to end the war.

Ireland's a good analogy, but Lebanon's better (and even bloodier before its leaders agreed to disagree).

[dave_p]

5. Air strikes on Sadr City?

Weren't they supposed to be our friends? And why attack Sadr when he just offered an olive branch to Sunni groups to end the sectarian conflict that's supposedly America's reason for staying?

[Barrett808]

8. Reuters: Shi'ite militias attack British forces in Basra

BASRA, Iraq, May 26 (Reuters) - British forces used an airstrike as they fought off attacks in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, military officials said on Saturday, but angry residents said the strike killed eight civilians.

British and Iraqi forces came under a series of attacks for more than two hours overnight in Basra, a gateway to the Gulf and Iraq's rich southern oilfields, by insurgents using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

The attacks against British and Iraqi posts came hours after Wissam Abdul Qader, also known as Abu Qader, the head of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in Basra, was killed by Iraqi special forces on Friday.

Angry crowds carried the coffins of eight people in a funeral procession through the streets of Basra on Saturday. They said the eight were civilians killed in the airstrike.

Basra resident Abu Zahra said a helicopter had fired rockets into the densely populated Tamimiya neighbourhood.

A Reuters reporter saw a large crater in the middle of a street, while a nearby Shi'ite mosque had also been damaged.

A British military statement said a "low-flying aircraft" and other measures it described as "appropriate and proportional" were used to repel the attacks and it was believed that "a number" of militia were killed.

"The intensity of the attacks would suggest that they may have been in direct retaliation to the killing of the terrorist Wissam Abu Qader," the statement said.

British military spokesman Major David Gell would not give further details about the aircraft or the actions taken.

"The feeling on the streets is tense but it's quiet now," he said.

British officials said Qader was killed when he resisted arrest. He was suspected of involvement in planting roadside bombs, weapons trafficking, assassinations and planning and participating in attacks against British troops.

A senior member of Sadr's political movement said after Qader's killing that their response would be limited to "political resistance".

British troops have stepped up operations against Shi'ite militias in the city in recent weeks as they prepare to hand over to Iraqi security forces.

http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL636922.htm