So there should be no more doubts left in the deranged minds of yanks that Iraqis are waiting to be librated. The supreme opposition shi’ite leader left no doubts. Sorry to burst your bubble yanks no red carpet and no roses… Yeah I know its tough and bitter pill to swallow but so what you are use to it…
In his Tuesday statement, Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim warned American-British forces to leave Iraq at the earliest possible moment or face the Iraqi opposition’s military resistance. ** Being the leader of the main armed opposition group of the Iraqi Shi’ites, the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI), Hakim’s warning left no doubt that the American-British hope for a stable and docile Iraq run by a pro-American regime will not likely come true. **
The SAIRI leader made the warning in a Tehran press conference attended by Iranian and foreign journalists. During the event, he stated that the Americans and the British sought to occupy Iraq to achieve their colonial objectives, which are unachievable, as, according to him, “The world does not approve of any colonialism and occupation.”
Hakim went beyond expressing resentment towards the war on Iraq to spell out the SAIRI’s determination to resist its hoped-for objectives. He concluded, “Foreign troops must exit Iraq in the earliest [time].” However, if they chose to stay in Iraq, he added, “[the] Iraqi nation will resist by any possible means.” According to him, failure to achieve their goal through peaceful means would make the Iraqis resort to violent ones. Hence, “We [Iraqis] will take peaceful measures in this respect at the beginning but we will use force later.”
Najaf and Karbala are the holiest sites of Shi’ite Islam. Najaf - where Ayatollah Khomeini lived before returning to lead the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 - is the site of Imam Ali’s tomb, the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and revered 14th century founder of the Shi’ite branch of Islam. Karbala is the site of the famous 7th century battle where Imam Hussein was killed and subsequently buried. To the utmost horror of Shi’ites everywhere - Arabs, Persians, South Asians - American tanks are now rumbling around Najaf and Karbala. If the conquest of Baghdad - the iconic seat of the Caliphate for 700 years - is bound to ignite fury in the Sunni Arab world, one shudders to imagine what would happen in the Shi’ite world if Najaf and Karbala are desecrated during the war or under American occupation. Sheikh Mohamed al-Khakani, a top imam in Najaf, has in fact already called for a jihad: “Iraqis should defend their country, honor and religion by expelling the unbelievers from the land of Islam.” This de facto defensive jihad goes a long way to explain why Shi’ites in southern Iraq are not welcoming the Anglo-American tanks with wine and roses, as had been widely expected. Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) - the most important Iraqi Shi’ite opposition group, based in Tehran - has been no less explicit. He promised that his Badr Brigades - an army of 15,000 deployed partly in Iran and partly in Iraqi Kurdistan - will wage war against the Americans if they reveal themselves to be occupiers.
A Lebanese source confirms that about 700 Hezbollah warriors are already in Iraq. They are familiar with Najaf and Karbala, are in tune with the parallels being drawn across the Arab world between the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Lebanese Shi’ites at the time received the Israelis as liberators. But when the Israelis revealed themselves as an occupying force, the Shi’ites turned on them. Instinctively, the majority of Arabs, Sunni or Shi’ite, view the whole American policy in the Middle East as anti-Arab. They are quick to point out how after the 1991 Gulf War, for example, the Kurds in northern Iraq got their autonomous zone, unlike the Shi’ites in the south. In operation “Iraqi Freedom”, the Pentagon has been forced to face the hard reality of the Iraqis’ fighting spirit as the Saddam Hussein regime resists. Now this is a real war - in the full scope of its tragedy. More (at least 120,000) American troops in the war theater. More bombings. More targets. More civilian victims. And the main victims of the renewed war in southern Iraq - essential to secure humanitarian operations - will remain Shi’ite civilians. The proof of the Pentagon’s strategic failure is one Lieutenant-General William Wallace’s statement from the field: “This enemy is different from the one we war-gamed.” American military strategist Harlan Ullman’s Shock and Awe, as a concept, is dead. Before they encircle Baghdad - even Iraqi generals recognize it could happen by the end of next week - Americans will have to battle the Medina Division of the Republican Guards, which moved from south Baghdad to the Karbala Gap, a narrow bit of land between a lake and the Euphrates river. Pentagon generals might think that once the Medina and Baghdad divisions are vanquished the game is over. But then there will be the siege of Baghdad - and Washington simply cannot afford to turn Baghdad into a Grozny or Jenin. By that time the British would have attacked and occupied Basra and the Americans defeated the stiff resistance of the paramilitary Fedayeen militias in the Shi’ite south. But the Sunni Fedayeen are not alone: they are getting help from Shi’ites who refuse to bow to a foreign occupying force.
In Basra, Shi’ite women in black were and are still putting the Iraqi flag in bombed buildings and chanting slogans praising Saddam. They were supposed to be happy with their “liberation”. But the fact is the invasion strengthened Saddam both inside Iraq and around the Arab world. The invasion simply smashed Saddam’s political opposition. Saddam’s well-documented and reprehensible Stalinist practices are not the issue any more. The US hawks haven’t been doing their homework: Palestine and now Iraq are vivid demonstrations that no Arab will ever tolerate an occupying force on Arab land. It will take divine intervention for America to capture the Shi’ite hearts and minds. For Shi’ites, Arab nationalism - and especially the Ba’ath Party version adapted by Saddam for his own purposes - is nothing but undisguised Sunni domination. “Arab nationalism” has been a kind of byword for a social contract lasting many decades in Iraq. The Shi’ites will have no more of it. But they cannot trust the Americans to free them. They view Washington as hostile to Shi’ite Iran, to the Shi’ites in Syria and Lebanon, and only interested in oil in Shi’ite southern Iraq and oil in the Shi’ite eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Shi’ites - who consider themselves Iraqis first and foremost - still remember how they were betrayed by Bush senior in March 1991. The British are now forced to conquer Basra. There are at least three good reasons for it: to smash the active guerrilla campaign by the Fedayeen; to prevent a humanitarian disaster that would definitely consolidate the already monolithic international revulsion towards the war; and to produce those mythical images of “liberation” on Anglo-American TV that simply refuse to materialize. While Western eyes focus on Basra, Shi’ite eyes are predominantly fixed on what is happening in Najaf, 140 kilometers south of Baghdad. The city is in fact surrounded and cut off from the rest of the country. Najaf is a key communications center. That’s where the main supply route running along the Euphrates river from Nasiriyah and the port of Umm Qasr (to the east of the Euphrates river) meets another road (to the west). Najaf has an airport. And from Najaf, there are roads on both sides of the Euphrates getting to within 50 kilometers of Baghdad. The Iraqi army’s desperate plan is to cut the Americans’ serpent line of communication along and across the Euphrates, and then isolate the extended American 5th Marine Corps. They don’t stand much of a chance, though. Inside Najaf, the resistance is organized by Saddam’s Fedayeen, the ragtag al-Quds Liberation Army and Ba’ath Party officials. They all know there’s no way out: they will die fighting. Nobody actually knows what’s happening inside the city of 100,000, built around the fabulous golden mosque where Imam Ali is buried. Nobody knows how many civilians - all of them Shi’ite - have already died in Najaf, Nasiriyah and Basra. There are no images to do justice to them - but their sacrifice will be vivid in Shi’ite hearts and minds. Shi’ites never forget their sorrow: for them, the 7th century battle of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Ali are as vivid as the American forces ripping today through Karbala and Najaf.
Iraqi Advance Pushes Three US Brigades Back With Heavy Casulaties
Najaf, Iraq –
An attack launched by Iraqi Republican Guard forces against US positions near Najaf and Karabela has resulted in the decisive defeat of three US Brigades, who have been forced to retreat from the advance positions to an unknown location.
The US force, consisting of elements of 101st Airborne and 3rd Infantry, reported in the media at near 7000, have reportedly lost approximately 112 killed and wounded and have been driven “into the desert” according to Iraqi sources. Western press reports of the battle that appeared briefly on the Washington Post’s website have been pulled, and the conclusion of a press conference by a near hysterical Donald Rumsfeld appears to confirm reports of the US defeat.
Iraqi forces reportedly used the sandstorm as cover to sneak up to the perimeter of US locations, from which they overran US positions. More than 100 Iraqis were killed in the attack, but a significant amount of US equipment, including a fully functional Abrams tank, have been captured by the Iraqis, and numerous other armored vehicles have been destroyed.
I think the issue is not whether Kim is a good guy or whether Saddam is worth fighting for. If anything, many people are just hoping that US chokes on its own arrogance. Anyone who contributes to bring holier-than-thou and Might-is-Right US down will be cheered. After Vietnam debacle, there were several years of introspection in the US.
Since 1991, when the dumb sheiks invited them as the saviors successive US Administrations are again getting regular chull every few years for the "New World Order", which allows them as the Policeman of the World. The first Gulf war, then Kosovo and then Afghanistan, gave them the false sense of security that they are invincible. Sure, they may even take Baghdad initially.. but the mounting US casualities, fierce resistance and huge PR disasters faced by US in the world media may ultimately mean that US may barely win the war, but will hopefully lose their superiority complex, credibility and grandeur.
In one sense it is sad to see such a huge power-house of freedom, intellectual brilliance, great civic society and amazing cultural and religious diversity, could trust its leadership to people whose motives are unclear, whose statements are lies and whose arrogance is beyond words.
*An attack launched by Iraqi Republican Guard forces against US positions near Najaf and Karabela has resulted in the decisive defeat of three US Brigades, who have been forced to retreat from the advance positions to an unknown location. *
You won't hear the embedded US-UK journalists report that, but from all reports there is a great deal of truth in it. After all why would the US halt it's advance towards Baghdad for upto six days, apart from the fact the soldiers are not receiving adequate supplies?
Here is an interesting read see how US media masks out all the negative news. So far all the US casulties, destruction of tanks assets or beaten back by Rep Guards etc is all reported by none US sources. And US media is the fisrt to report if its the opposite, draw your own conclusions.
American Free Press
Commentary – http://www.americanfreepress.net
Mainstream Media’s Sanitized War Coverage Helps Mask Carnage US Casulaties Being Vastly Underreported
The U.S. mass media’s censored and sanitized coverage of the war in Iraq is chiefly responsible for the divergence in American and European public opinions.
Exclusive to American Free Press
By Christopher Bollyn
The huge divergence between American and world public opinion polls on the war in Iraq reflects the vast differences in war reporting being done by U.S. and foreign mass media networks. Due to self-censorship and official restraints, which govern what U.S. media networks report, Americans are getting a distorted and “sanitized” version of events in Iraq while Europeans and others are much more likely to see news reports and images that convey the brutal reality of the war in Iraq.
The “sanitized” view of the war presented by the U.S. media is dominated by long-distance photos of missile attacks and battlefield scenes reported by reporters who are traveling with U.S. and British soldiers.
Although some 500 reporters are “embedded” with U.S. and British forces in Iraq, their reports from the field are subject to U.S. military embedding restrictions, which give troop commanders control over what can be reported.
An unspoken rule, according to USA Today, is that “negative stories” are “viewed as unpatriotic.” This direct and indirect censorship has resulted in Americans receiving a “sanitized” view of the war, despite “vivid footage” from the front lines. The difference in how the war is covered is readily apparent from the disturbing images published by European and Asian news networks—but censored by the U.S. media.
Bild, Germany’s most popular newspaper known for its illustrations, carried a headline “Bloody slaughter for Baghdad” on March 26. The front page was taken up with a large photo of an injured U.S. marine, with a number scrawled on his forehead, being carried by another marine from the battlefield.
The following pages presented photos of captured U.S. helicopter pilots, a missing 19-year-old female soldier from West Virginia, and grisly images of the war under the headline, “Hundreds of corpses lie in the desert.”
However, the U.S. equivalent of Bild, USA Today, like most American newspapers, censors the unpleasant realities of war by keeping disturbing images out of the paper.
On the same day that Bild carried the “Bloody slaughter” headline with photos of injured, captured, and killed U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians, the lead story on USA Today’s on-line news page was about the blooming of Washington’s cherry blossoms.
“The Arab world sees pictures of bloodied bodies of young children. They watch scenes crowded with corpses, including gruesome images of dead American soldiers. Americans see almost none of that,” The Boston Globe reported on March 26.
“Friends from Syria are sending e-mails to me, asking what are the people in the U.S. telling you about the images of civilian casualties,” said Imad Moustapha, chief of public diplomacy at the Syrian Embassy in Washington. “My answer to them is very simple and sad: ‘Sorry, no one is seeing those images here.’ ”
A U.S. diplomat in the region told the Globe that the difference in reporting between the U.S. networks CNN and Fox News on the one hand, and the Arabic al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV networks on the other, made it seem like he was watching different battles.
“The Arab world is seeing trips to the hospitals, grieving parents, while the American cable stations and networks are showing the troops in the field,” the diplomat said. “The trouble is, it is creating different memories of the war, and it will reinforce the anger here about what the U.S. is doing.”
When a Baghdad marketplace was hit by missiles, which reportedly killed and injured dozens of Iraqi civilians on March 26, U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations in Qatar, rejected out-of-hand the allegation that coalition bombs had hit the market and blamed the Iraqis for killing their own civilians. Brooks said he did not “accept the premise . . . that civilians have been killed by coalition bombs.”
Suggesting that Iraqis had killed the civilians in the market, Brooks said: “Iraqi civilians (are) being marched out in front of irregular formations while they are firing. Iraqi civilians are being killed on the battlefield by Iraqis. I can’t make that point more strongly than I’ve just done.”
Hafez al-Mirazi, Washington bureau chief for the Qatar-based Arabic- language al Jazeera news network, said he was surprised by the U.S. reaction to the broadcast of the footage of the dead Americans and pointed out that his network had carried equally gruesome footage of dead Iraqis.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, deputy commander of Combined Forces Command in Qatar, criticized al Jazeera for broadcasting the images.
“The pictures were disgusting,” Abizaid said, adding that he did not want other stations to show the video.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said al Jazeera was portraying the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in a negative light. Powell accused the Arabic-language satellite broad caster of a lack of objectivity in covering the war.
“’The U.S. media did not carry anything from us of those casualties,” al- Mirazi said. “The American TV carries us live when there is bombing in the skies of Baghdad, the shock and awe. But when it comes to the casualties from the Iraqi or the American side, they don’t want to see it.
“If we didn’t show them, that would not be realistic journalism,” he said. “In America, there is some kind of difference of perspective and environment. The American audience is more accustomed to video games, particularly after the Gulf War of 1991. In the Middle East and the Arab world, people are accustomed to seeing the corpses,” he said. “They see the victims of these conflicts.”
“But this emphasis on war game imagery is not serving Americans well,” Marian Wilkenson, Washington correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote. “Outside the U.S., pictures from al Jazeera of injured Iraqis, burnt children and crying mothers are being transmitted throughout the Arab world and much of Europe. If the conflict intensifies, this will increase. And Americans will have little idea why the war is instilling such antagonism in the Arab world.”
While the “most dramatic news of the day,” including images of captured U.S. military personnel, was flashed around the world, most Americans did not see the pictures or hear the news, Wilkenson said, due to pressure from the U.S. military.
“The U.S. media censored the story after warnings, threats and exhortations from the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld,” Wilkenson wrote, “who said the Geneva Convention makes it illegal for prisoners of war to be ‘shown and pictured and humiliated.’ ”
Al Jazeera’s English-language and Arabic web sites were both shut down after a spate of suspected hacker attacks on March 25.
Al Jazeera is the most popular Arabic web site in the world. Both it and its English-language web site (english.aljazeera.net), which was only launched on Monday, March 24, were unavailable after suspected attacks crashed both sites.
Managing editor Joanne Tucker said the English site could not be updated for hours on Tuesday.
“We’ve had a lot of obstacles thrown in our way,” Tucker said. “I thought the launch would be quite smooth and wouldn’t make too many waves, but the reaction has been amazing. It has been almost surreal.”
Speaking from the broadcaster’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, communications manager Jihad Ali Ballout said the company was working to get the sites up and running. “Our people are doing our best but it could take some time,” he said.
Asked where the attacks originated, Ali Ballout said: “I wish I knew. There are rumors that the attacks originated in the U.S. but at this moment in time we cannot verify that. But it is worrying and an indication perhaps [that] in certain quarters there is a fear of freedom of _expression and freedom of the press.”
This isnt a war between shiite Iran and sunni Iraqi regime. The shiite in south may have a hatred for Saddam but their national pride comes first. They see it as an invasion, just like everyone else in the Arab world does. And they are well aware of the US not living up to its expectatoins when it comes to "liberating". Its a wel known fact throughout the world that US puts hers own interest above everything else. And shiite dont want to be used in this killing game.
On a side note:
[thumb=B]thumbs.JPG[/thumb]
Iraqis are giving passing Americans the "thumbs up" sign, which they interpret as a symbol of support. Its a Middle Eastern insult infact and "thumbs up" traditionally translates as the foulest of Iraqi insults—the most straightforward interpretation is "Up yours, pal"
it does mean that, because you see in the Arab world they like to use their hands to express their feelings, just like the Italians so this guy is saying “up yours pal”
Considering that the suicide bomber was a Shia Muslim, and the fact that most of the resistance in the southern Iraq has been from the Shia’s, it clearly shows America’s hopes to divide Iraqi people has failed.
^
Yes there will most definitely be an uprising if the shrines in Kerbala or Najaf are targeted but not of the kind that is encouraged. Apart from these two main centres other important areas not to target are Kazimiyya/Kazmain, Samara and related places.
Oh Oh. Seems as if the last nail in the coffin was pulled out. Reuters and Fox News reports that the senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who had been held under house arrest by Saddam’s government, had ordered local people in a “fatwa” (edict) not to interfere with the U.S.-led invasion troops.
Hey yanks you should have done your homework
it does mean that, because you see in the Arab world they like to use their hands to express their feelings, just like the Italians