The Rolling Stone has a great article, "The Myth of the Surge," on the chasm that still remains between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq. The entire article is worth reading but this jumped out at me:
When I go to visit the 172 INP, American officers from the 2-2 SCR admonish me to wear my body armor — to protect myself from accidental discharges by the Iraqi police. "I did convoy security in the Sunni Triangle and was hit by numerous IEDs, complex attacks, small arms," Capt. Cox tells me. "But I never felt closer to death than when I was working with Iraqi security forces."
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Re Rolling Stone piece:US military telling the truth about our unpopularity in Iraq and our being "played" there,will never be mentioned by the likes of AJ Strata.
Meanwhile,Hal Lindsay and the Jehovah's Witnesses never apologize for incorrect predictions of Christ's return, and the blogger neo-con Elmer Gantrys never apologize for four years of false predictions of the
"dead-end" insurgency. Exhibit "A"
AJ Strata, whom Rush Limbaugh is said to read regularly. This charlatan has chortled in dizzying cycles for years,that Al Qaeda type groups have been vanquished from Iraq . When they "un-vanquish" ,as today, no mention is made of their past assigned extinction, just more entreaties that America must resist the "Surrendercrats"
siren call, now that they are desperately carrying off successful hits.
And never,never any mention of those leaked CIA and other reports,dating from 2004, which describe the occupation as fueling rather than reducing the ranks of the insurgency, in Iraq and worldwide!
pertinent comments by Juan Cole
today on the Shia massacre yesterday, re subjects outlined in Rolling Stone story:
"Alexandra Zavis of the LAT Times reports that the Iskandariya bombing was preceded by clashes between Sunnis and Shiites in the southwestern Dora district of Baghdad. On Saturday, Shiite crowds had taunted the Sunnis left in Dora that the highway through the neighborhood now belonged to them. Since many Sunnis have been ethnically cleansed from that area during the past year, the taunts stung.
Members of the Sunni Awakening Council (on the American payroll) went to the Iraqi army units in the neighborhood to complain about the Shiite pilgrims' taunting, and the army--mostly Shiite--attacked the Sunnis! A Sunni charged that on Saturday, "Army forces started shooting randomly at locals."
So then on Sunday morning more Shiite pilgrims come through on their way to Karbala, with Mahdi Army militiamen escorting them. First, Sunni guerrillas set off a roadside bomb. Then others threw grenades from a bridge on the pilgrims below. About 3 pilgrims were killed, and 43 were injured.
That is, the violence in Dora began as a conflict between the supposedly quiescent Mahdi Army and the US-backed Sunni Awakening Council! I suspect it is a microcosm of what will happen when the Sunnis come back to Baghdad from Damascus. (For the dynamics in Dora, see Nir Rosen's Rolling Stone piece, linked below).
Ken,
Thanx for the update!
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