Rock The Truth: The Boston Times: Iraq

Sunday, June 15, 2008

The Boston Times: Iraq

Yup, the operation expected to be covered for four days -- and then to disappear from the media coverage.

I'm tired of the lying about Iraq and the cover up of mass-murder.

"Iraqi troops target rebels in cleric's army; Operation in south expected to last 4 days" by Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times News Service | June 15, 2008

BAGHDAD - Aiming at a power base of a rival Shi'ite leader, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent troops into the southern city of Amara yesterday.

The operation in Amara, a city that is dominated politically by the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was the fourth initiative this year in which Maliki has sent troops into a city dominated by Shi'ite or Sunni militias.

The Iraqi soldiers assembled at an airport 6 miles to the northeast of Amara, and at a local stadium. By early evening, the troops had fanned out in the city center. The district police chief said security forces raided 68 homes in the province and found ammunition and explosives.

Maliki called on insurgents in Amara to surrender and hand over weapons and bombs over the next four days, Reuters reported.

The launch of the operation came a day after Sadr announced that he was reorganizing his Shi'ite movement.

In a statement read by aides during Friday prayers, Sadr said the movement would be divided into two branches. One group will remain armed and operate as an underground force, continuing to oppose the presence of American troops. The other branch would concentrate on politics and providing social services to Iraqis.

The armed wing, he said, will be drawn from experienced Mahdi Army fighters and be limited in size. Sadr said that fighters would have to have his written permission to carry weapons.

Sadr is a mercurial figure who leads a movement that is at once a guerrilla group fighting Americans and an important political force in the parliamentary democracy that the United States hopes to help create as a lasting government in Iraq.

The decision to divide the Mahdi Army into political and armed wings recalled similar evolutions in such movements as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In violence yesterday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a village market in Diyala Province, where people had gathered to watch the Iraqi national soccer team defeat China 2-1 in a World Cup qualifying match. At least 25 people were wounded, 12 of them critically, a police official said.

I'm so sick of the damn false-flagging bullshit, readers.

See the bottom of the post for much, much more.

In Amara, residents awoke yesterday to helicopters thudding overhead, dropping leaflets that told them to stay indoors and to cooperate with Iraqi soldiers who would be arriving shortly.

Amara is the capital of Maysan Province, the only province in Iraq where the local government is run by politicians aligned with Sadr, whose movement competes with other Shi'ite parties.

The military operation, planned for weeks, did not appear related to Sadr's decision to remake his organization. But both actions reflected less tolerance in Iraq for the mixture of politics and guns outside a better trained military....

An Iraqi general said the operation in Amara would unfold along the lines of an initiative this year against Shi'ite militias in the nearby city of Basra. There, Iraqi soldiers entered but relied on air support from the American military and small teams of American advisers....

With a population of about 350,000, Amara is smaller than Basra and the sites of other operations initiated by Maliki: the predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad, and Mosul. But Amara is tactically important as a suspected conduit for weapons smuggled across marshlands along the border with Iran.

In the early months after the United States invaded Iraq, rival militant groups engaged in frequent gun battles in Amara, sometime overrunning government buildings. The militias seized control of the city, over which the central government in Baghdad had limited control.

General Hameed Nabeel, the commander of the Iraqi Army's First Brigade, which is garrisoned in Maysan Province, said in an interview that the purpose of the operation was to serve court-issued arrest warrants. He said soldiers would try to detain militants who had fled north to Amara from the earlier fighting in Basra.

But a senior Sadr official, Luaa Smaisem, the head of the movement's political commission, said he believed the operation would go beyond targeting militia fighters. He said it would be used to weaken the Sadrists politically before provincial elections in the fall."

About that sectarianism: Memory Hole: The Dream Vacation

Memory Hole: Sistani's Reach

Memory Hole: The Uniters of Islam

Occupation Iraq: Sectarian Saviors

Also see: