NYT: After 3 Weeks of Fighting in Najaf, 1 Riddle: Who Won?

[leftchick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/weekinreview/29FILK.html

<snip>
Yet for all of that, the burden of announcing the tentative peace accord had fallen to Ayatollah Sistani, the country's most revered religious figure. Mr. Sadr was allowed to dash out the front door.

The kid-glove treatment of Mr. Sadr here, after days of fighting that left hundreds of Iraqis dead, points up the dilemma faced by American commanders and Iraq's new leaders. As much as both groups would like to capture or kill Mr. Sadr - and there is no doubt that they would - neither the American military nor Iraq's American-appointed government feels politically strong enough to get away with it.

<snip>
"No one can defeat the Mahdi Army," said Arkan Rahim, a 30-year-old Iraqi who fought the entire three week-long battle. "The Mahdi Army is all Iraqis, the whole Iraqi nation."

Mr. Rahim was one of hundreds of Mahdi Army fighters who streamed out of the warrens and narrow alleyways of Najaf's old city Friday morning as the peace deal took hold. Mr. Rahim and the other Mahdi fighters lucky enough to have survived the American military onslaught were already holding up Mr. Sadr as a mythic leader who had done a great deed for Iraq's Shiites by protecting one of their most sacred sites.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Nobody?

As far as I am concerned, no one ever "wins" a war. There is too damned much bloody waste on all sides.

[Algorem]

2. probably a deal was made to stop for rethug convention?

[cal04]

3. My thought is they purposely sent Sistani back to get

them out of the shrine so they could attack them and not cause any more of an uprising damaging the Shrine. I don't completely trust Sistani or why he was out of the country at that time and mysteriously came back to broker a deal.
The title of this story should be changed, how does anybody win when lives are lost.

[movonne]

4. Well I think he was out of the country because he had heart surgery

in London...I also think he came back to stop this destroying their holy mosque against doctors orders...with everything happening so quickly I don't know if all these facts are right.

[bvar22]

5. One thing for sure,

the US puppet government recently installed in Baghdad LOST credibility in Iraq and the World!

[warrior1]

6. Well of course

Jesus bush.

[Disturbed]

7. CNN-Right Wing Propaganda Network

They stated that the "Interim Govt." won. The real winner is al Sistani. He is the power in Iraq now. Al Sadr, if he survises, may be the 2nd power broker in Iraq. The US Pupet Govt. personnel are dead men walking. I suspect that some of the will be flown out in the dead of night in the near future.

If al Sistani wants Iraq to be free of US domination he should reach out to the Sunnis and Kurds and broker a solution for the territories.If all three factions united they could demand that the Occupation end.

[leftchick]

8. Did they really say that?

omg.... it is as plain as day to anyone with a functioning brain that the US and their thug/puppet allawi are bigtime losers here...God I wish we had real news here in AmeriKa.

[Disturbed]

10. Mass Media

Another topic but don't we know now that most Networks are owned by Corps that are also entwined with the Military Industrial Complex? Don't we know that they support endless war because it generates huge profits? Aren't they complicit in the destruction of Amerika's environment, civil liberties, and the Working Class?

I feel that many of us know the answers are a resounding...YES!

[0007]

9. The mighty mites could stop the nat? Nats win, but gave much blood!

[Mr.Green93]

11. Islam

[barb162]

12. yes

and that, to me, is extremely unfortunate for the people of Iraq, especially the women.

[PATRICK]

13. Shia scores clear victory

and time will increase the realization and certainty of that among the bloodied Sadr supporters. Anyone else is free to deny it and it won't matter.

Al the Americans can do is leave. In military terms the ground has not been taken, the nation is not pacified or dominated, the Shia have united
not divided their power, the puppet regime hangs limp in its strings.

Not trying to be over dramatic, the attitudes of the Shia unreported in the US media will be much more firm than I have just been.

The determined effort to mop up Sadr was a tremendous blunder right from the beginning, most especially in its sledgehammer execution without the horrific cruelty needed to make such a decision work. Instead they just created martyrs and a bloody drama within which the heretofore uninvolved
Shia could face down everyone. All hand delivered by Mr. Bush's political agenda back here in three monkey town.

[bemildred]

14. Horrific cruelty does not work either, or rather it only

works against a population that has vastly inferior arms,
like pitchforks and machetes. Where there are automatic
weapons, RPGs, sniper rifles, and the like, violence only
brings reprisals and chaos.

There was plenty of violence, the Iraqis took everything we had,
short of WMD, and they were still waiting there in the rubble for
us with their RPGs and sniper rifles.

There was no possibility of the means used accomplishing any useful
strategic goal, tactically I suppose it was possible we could have
nailed al Sadr, but that would still have been a bad thing.

A classic example of the saying that to a small boy with a hammer,
everything looks like a nail. An all around dumb effort on every
level.

[PATRICK]

16. Stringing together temporary fixes

to preserve the illusion, the Crusader castles safeguarding the draining of Iraq's oil, the continuity of the puppet regime. That is the miserable goal, not democracy and of course, even that is failing. Half measures stumbling under cover of PR denial and stubborn clinging until they surely must give up or better- turn on each other while the conquerors laugh and loot.

Even more absurd- absent armed struggle where the military stubbornly does its grim job, our soldiers do not know the agenda.

[dArKeR]

15. It's peace but the dead are everywhere - MG

Luke Harding

In an alleyway next to Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, Commander Sayed Haider rested on Friday. For more than three weeks he and his fellow fighters from the Mahdi army had battled against the vast firepower of the United States military. Now was a time to reflect.

"We believe that we are right. This is our country. This is our city. We will not accept that people come and occupy our land," he said.

Nearby, fighters were lugging the corpse of a dead comrade out from the shattered ruins of a hotel; others were brewing tea.

Thousands of pilgrims, meanwhile, had begun flowing past the sandbags and metal barricades which until recently had blocked the path of American tanks.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121270&t=1

Bush is a sick lying murderer of Americans, Iraqi, British... What a disgrace to America a disgrace to God.