Blogging around Iraq

Or maybe I should title this post, "Cutting through the crap." Why read propaganda from our government when you can get the straight dope from people who have forgotten more about Iraq then Bush will ever learn?

Raed knows how to cut through the crap with another interesting post.

The Three Smart Political Steps of the Day:

Uno) AsSadr announced that this uprising is the choice of the Iraqi people, he didn?t ask anyone to fight.
I know he is lying, he knows that he is lying?
But that was a smart political thing to do though.
He preferred to leave the opportunity of representing himself as a public leader, but gave more opportunities for other political and religious parties to join the uprising.

Dos) AsSadr started a compassion campaign for the people in Falluja, which had a good response from the majority of Iraqis. This ended the Sunni-Shia tension. [tasnote: this can only mean trouble.]

Tres) AsSadr launched his first regional affairs message, he sent an open message to the Kuwaiti people to start putting more pressure on their government, ?It is the responsibility of the Kuwaiti people to help us free both our counties from the big devil?.

The Sunni-Shia reconciliation gave the uprising people another boost, and the speeches of Sistani and Baghdadi showed sympathy with AsSadr. [tasnote: this goes completely against reports that most Shia are against the uprising.]

Now, the two unhappy campers are the governing council and the Kurds. The soft GC is the easiest target to attack and blame for the situation. The Kurds are not very comfortable with the anti-occupation alliance which could threaten their plans.

I really want to understand from Rumsfeld where are his ?majority??? the ?majority? of Iraqis that are against the current uprising, the majority that he wants to help them in reaching to their freedom? where are they?
If the millions in the ?Sunni Triangle? are the minority, and the other millions of AsSadr are the minority? where are the majority? In Washington?
And if the minority can do all of this! And kick the coalition forces from cities like Kut? what can the majority do? Occupy the United States? [tasnote: hah!]

Yesterday, Raed had this to say about our new friend Sadr. He aims to clear up a few misconceptions about him that we in the US might have. (His link doesn't seem to be working, but it's a post from 4/7/04.)

The uprising in Iraq is still expanding…

But I still feel that Bush and Bremer are totally out of the picture…

All what we can hear from the coalition governments’ spokesmen, and from the international media news are some fake explanations and explanations…

Let me declare some points:

AsSadr is NOT reflecting a minority of Iraqis, this is a stupid big lie.
Whether we liked him or not, he is the political and religious leader for MILLIONS of Iraqis in the southern region…
There are 15 million Iraqis living in the south, and another 5 million in Baghdad, I can say that 5 to 7 millions of them can be considered as AsSadr followers.

AsSadr is NOT a mere twenty-something year old guy, that is playing games.
Whether we liked him or not, he is a phenomenon. When people in the south of Iraq look at Muqtada AsSadr, they see the history of his father, the deep roots of his religious supporter: AlHaeri.

AsSadr is NOT a small follower of the Iranian Government; he has very bad relations with the official government of Iran, unlike Sistani and Hakim.

AsSadr is THE GOVERNMENT in most of the cities of the south: Amara, Kut, Nasryya and Diwanyya and Simawa partially, and Najaf partially (Kufa is a small city in Najaf that is the center of AsSadr).

There's much more on Raed's blog. Check on it daily.

Salem Pax chimes in with some more truth. What I get from reading this and what Raed has to say is that Sadr is much, much more powerful then the Bush administration, if they have a clue, would like the American public to believe.

You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands reach every where and you don't want to be on their shit list. Every body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and how they describe Sadir's Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs. There you have it.

[snip]

Dear US administration,
Welcome to the next level. Please don't act surprised and what sort of timing is that it: planning to go on a huge attack on the west of Iraq and provoking a group you know very well (I pray to god you knew) that they are trouble makers.

Us? Provoke violence? Never...

Zeyad at Healing Iraq, who has nothing good to say about Sadr, noted the "profession coordination" of his rise to power.

Of course, Sadr has set up offices in almost every city, town, and village in the south. And I have mentioned earlier that they had assumed full control over my small village where I work in the Basrah governorate weeks ago, terrorizing IP officers, civil servants, and doctors but nobody was listening. I don't think I will be heading back there any soon now. What surprises me is the almost professional coordination of the uprisings in all of these areas. I'm assuming, of course, that the money and equipment supplied by our dear Mullahs in Iran is being put to use good enough, not to mention the hundreds of Pasderan and Iranian intelligence officers.. sorry I mean Iranian Shia pilgrims that have been pouring into Iraq for months now.

Riverbend has a post which captures the current mood of Iraq, and I want to quote all of it, but this post has become very long so I'll take the ending and expect you to read the rest.

Our foreign minister Hoshyar Zibari was being interviewed by some British journalist yesterday, making excuses for Tony Blair and commending him on the war. At one point someone asked him about the current situation in Iraq. He mumbled something about how there were 'problems' but it wasn't a big deal because Iraq was 'stable'… what Iraq is he living in?

And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad...

Though not in Iraq (yet), Christopher at Back to Iraq provides us with a handy-dandy map of Iraq, highlighting just where the violence is.

I realize this post is lengthy, and you may be seeing a few more like this, but the situation in Iraq is very serious and, gathering the thoughts from these Iraqis, very dire. I'm not going to trust our government to tell us the truth; Bush hasn't made one honest fucking statement since he was appointed the presidency. If Bush was honest, we wouldn't be in Iraq right now, he wouldn't have created this mess. We deserve to know the truth, no matter how long winded it is. If we don't educate ourselves about Iraq, then we're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. And the past I'm thinking of is right next door to China.