May 10 2008
Mahdi Army Surrenders, Authorizes Iraq Government To Disarm Fighters
Well, it should be damn interesting to see how the liberal SurrenderMedia spins this news into claims that Iraq is turning into another Vietnam. It seems the Mahdi Army in Sadr City has surrendered – completely:
Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad’s Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.
In return, Sadr’s Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government’s agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of “medium and heavy weaponry.”
The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that’s home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. On Friday, 15 people were killed and 112 were injured in fighting, officials at the neighborhoods two major hospitals said.
It also would be a startling turnaround in fortunes for Maliki, who’d been widely criticized for picking a fight with Sadr’s forces, first in the southern port city of Basra and then in Sadr City.
Members of Maliki’s Dawa Party and the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq met with Sadr officials on Thursday and Friday to come up with a 14-point agreement to end the weeks of fighting, …
What is interesting is how this sudden capitulation comes one day after aids to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr lashed out at the top Shiite cleric in all of Iraq and basically claimed he shared the guilty for the deaths in Sadr City because he had sided with Maliki and the US forces. This was an astounding and dangerous step for Sadr to take. Was this act of defiance too much for the powers to be, which decided it was time to end the fighting? Was Iran getting nervous about the building fire power the US was gathering in the region with the addition of another Carrier Group?
It was probably a combination of these factors, along with the fact that the Iraqi people were not rising up to side with Sadr and the Mahdi thugs, but instead were relieved when they Mahdi thugs were dispatched and the Iraqi government took control. Sadr was doomed from the beginning – as I predicted. He had no support among the mainstream Shiite leadership. The minute the Grand Ayatollah Sistani distanced himself from Sadr and his Militia and sided with the rule of law Sadr was through. Without Sistani’s blessing there would be no uprising, there would be isolation for Sadr and the Mahdi Army.
So Maliki and the US have taken on and beaten the Mahdi Army which now agrees to disarm as Maliki directed. Will there be cheering in the streets of Sadr City on this finale? You bet there will be, along with a new sense of pride in the Iraqi government. The second biggest losers in all this were the doom&gloom liberal SurrenderMedia and Surrendercrats. The world just won’t produce another Vietnam for them. Their predictions were wrong – again. And their hopes of a US failure in Iraq were wrong – as they have always been. Wrong in a smelly, sick kind of way.
What will be interesting to watch is: (1) the liberal SurrenderMedia eat crow as Iraq passes another milestone towards its bright, free future, (2) seeing the people of Iraq enjoy the new peaceful Iraq that will be arising again soon, and (3) learning exactly what it was that caused the Mahdi to fold like a lawn chair. Someone pulled the plug on this one.
They won’t eat crow. In my paper, the story was buried on page A-8 with no headline, at the back end of an article “Al Qaeda leader still free!” Bad headline, check. Negative story, check. Bungling in Iraq, check. Then, “oh by the way, Sadr City surrendered without a fight, although we don’t know why.” And then the obligatory “of course in Iraq it will take time to see what this really means.”
No it won’t, and you know it, you liars. That’s why you worked so hard to bury it. You know it, we know it, the Iraqi’s know it. Even the Iranians know it, which is probably why they’ve opened a second front in Lebanon. The press in this country has finally gone completely ’round the bend – they no longer exist to print news. Their *only* deliberate purpose now is to deliberately distort and, as needed, intentionally manufacture lies to promote a political agenda.
And they revel in it.
They cannot be reformed.
I believe it is time for some organizations (perhaps 527s?) to begin buying billboard advertising space in all major US cities, with simple ‘advertising’ headlines such as “CBS: Misinforming the Public for over 3 Decades” (see http://www.websiteX.org for details). Then CNN, ABC, NYT, etc. etc. It would be even better if these frauds would try to sue! There are tons of factual proof that they (MSM in general) have mis-reported, omitted pertinent facts, and outright lied in thousands of stories for the past 40 years. It is time to expose them for the journalistic frauds they are! The American public deserves to be informed without having to take their own time researching facts. What say you?
NOTE: http://www.websiteX.org is NOT a real URL. It was mentioned for demonstration purposes only, where the ‘advertising’ organizations would document all of the facts and agenda driven ‘spin’ the MSM has been perpetrating for decades.
How do we know this isn’t just another Mookie peace ploy? They’re surrounded about to get the shitty end of the stick, so why not agree to disarm, give up some of your medium and heavy weapons, and just don’t get caught with anything until the cordons are removed? They’ve gone through this before, Mookie gets the cease fire then rebuilds and starts shit again. He needs to be taken out, not killed but just disappear, so no one knows if he’s dead or in hiding. Keep him from being a martyr, or a face on t-shirt. Face on a milk cartoon sure, but keep him from being a rallying point. They also need full access to every rat hole in Sadr city, to see if there is something there. It may be to late though, what ever they are hiding may be gone or destroyed considering how quickly they agreed to this peace offering.
Scaulen, Mookie is in Iran. He’s been in Iran a long time. He’s going to stay in Iran a long time. Because of that, there is no “taking him out.” But, if his organization is neutered – no heavy weapons, no base of operations, no consistent revenue base – then he can just stay in Iran till hell freezes over and the mullahs go ice skating.
With no army and no base, he’s just another wanker with a funny hat. Iran’s got a million of ’em.
It’s a good thing Maliki didn’t let the western media influence him. Israel lets them call the shots. It’s too bad Israel doen’t follow Maliki’s tactics. They would be a lot better off. It is really galing to see Israel cave to these idiots when they are winning.
From “Macsmind”
It’s a big story because of who is really responsible for the success – the people of Sadr City.
“A government supporter said the Sadrists were brought to the table by the anger of Sadr City residents. On Thursday, the Iraqi military ordered Sadr City residents to evacuate in apparent preparation for a major offensive push.
“It is not the government who pressured the Sadrists into entering this agreement,†said Ali al Adeeb, a leading member of the Dawa party. “It is the pressure from the people inside Sadr City and from their own people that will make them act more responsibly.â€
In a democracy it’s the will of the people that rules and here we can call that principal a glowing success.
Many in the media and the pundit class will try and spin it as the wily Sadr made political gains by pulling back. Of course he is being isolated slowly but surely. Years ago the Mahdi were fighting across Iraq, now they are being hemmed in by Iraqi army units across the country. That is a sign of victory, not the idiot benchmarks established for the Democrat Congress.
The news made it all the way up to A12 in Louisville on Sunday… But then the editorial pages are mostly op-eds from nEW yOrk…