What extremists are saying according to U.S. Central Command (click on). Do they know who the extremists are? I don't think they do. The Shi'ites aren't extremists. They are people seeking strength for survival. They aren't the enemy to anyone. EXCEPT. Bush. His 'political' goals for Iraq have an enemy. Absolutely and that includes most of the Iraqis.
We are in Iraq for the "W"rong reasons. The USA military found Saddam and sent him to prison. But, to make an enemy of people once victimized by Saddam is wrong. It serves no one. These people have no capacity to be a threat to the USA, yet, repeatedly they are exposed to military wrath that levels cities and kills 100,000 people. They haven't done anything to us to provoke that kind of attack on them. All they wanted was their own way of life.
This is insane dictated by a man that is the worst president the USA has ever experienced.
December 24, 2006
Iraqi Government Officials Reach Out to Shiite Leaders
By MARC SANTORA
BAGHDAD, Dec. 23 — Iraq’s governing Shiite coalition, seeking to avoid possible disintegration, sent a delegation on Saturday to Najaf to visit two of Iraq’s most important unelected figures: the venerated religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who draws his support, in part, from the strength of his militia.
The delegation hoped to shore up support by bringing Mr. Sadr back into the government and getting reassurances from Ayatollah Sistani that he would reject recent calls, largely from the United States, for the formation of a new governing coalition, according to one official who was present at the meetings and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The current coalition is made of many Shiite groups, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Dawa Party. The proposed new coalition would include Sunni Arabs and Kurds and is viewed as a potential threat to the Maliki government.
Ayatollah Sistani almost never states his views publicly, and did not on Saturday. As is often the case, it was left to those who met with him to characterize his views. Leaders who met with him on Saturday said he rejected the calls for a new coalition.
Earlier in the week, Western officials and Iraqi leaders who support a multisectarian bloc said Ayatollah Sistani had tentatively lent his support to that concept.
The official who attended the Saturday meeting said Ayatollah Sistani has been open to the idea of an expanded coalition, but not at the expense of Shiite unity. Ayatollah Sistani, the official said, seemed more convinced Saturday that the expansion would shatter the current Shiite coalition, called the United Iraqi Alliance.
“He does not approve any alliance that would break the United Iraqi Alliance up,” said the official.
The delegation to Najaf was made up almost entirely of representatives of the Dawa Party, many of whose senior members oppose a multisectarian bloc because they believe it is an attempt to unseat the prime minister. Mr. Maliki himself has not said publicly if he supports the proposed new coalition. Later, when members of the delegation met with Mr. Sadr, they asked him to allow his followers to return to the government.
Mr. Sadr had pulled his 30 lawmakers and six cabinet ministers out of the government last month to protest Mr. Maliki’s decision to meet President Bush in Jordan. The United States has been seeking to sideline Mr. Sadr, who helped bring Mr. Maliki to power.
Most troubling for the Americans, and some Iraqi leaders, is the power of the militia controlled by Mr. Sadr, the Mahdi Army. The militia fighters continue to be the source of much of the violence in this country.
But members of the government delegation said they did not raise the subject when they met with Mr. Sadr for more than two hours.
Ali al-Adeeb, a prominent Dawa Party leader who attended the meeting, said the group did not discuss dissolving the militia because their goal was to bring Mr. Sadr into the political process. After the meeting with Mr. Sadr, delegation members said no decision had been made, but that talks would continue.
Even as the delegation avoided addressing the issue of militias, their destructive impact was being felt across the country. In southern cities, Iraqi security forces engaged in running clashes with members of the Mahdi Army.
On Friday, checkpoints were set up outside mosques in Samawa as the police and other security forces tried to find militiamen. The effort caused tensions that soon escalated from fistfights to brawls and finally exchanges of gunfire, according to the authorities and witnesses.
When a leading supporter of Mr. Sadr, Sayed Muhammad Khaqani, was wounded, the situation deteriorated further. At least 13 supporters of Mr. Sadr were killed, the head of the Sadr organization in Samawa said. At least five policemen were killed and three others wounded, an Iraqi official said.
On Friday night, a curfew was imposed in Samawa but was widely ignored. On Saturday, the Mahdi Army appeared to be in control of the northern half of the city, with Iraqi security forces maintaining control of the southern half, according to a police official in the city who insisted on anonymity. On Saturday night, local residents said the main roads in and out of the city, both to Baghdad to the North and Basra to the South, were closed. Residents seeking to get out were forced to endure another night of clashes.
Elsewhere, in Hayaniya, British tanks came under attack by men with rocket-propelled grenades, said Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for the British Army. He reported no British casualties and said three gunmen had been killed. In Basra, gunmen and security forces skirmished through the night and early morning on Saturday, clashes likely linked to a British effort to eliminate weapons from the city.
Iraqi security forces suffered another blow in Baghdad, where an Iraqi military intelligence officer, Lt. Hussein Jabir, was gunned down early on Saturday morning. There was also an attack on the Iraqi Army in the center of Baghdad on Saturday night and an improvised explosive device destroyed an army vehicle, killing two soldiers. The sectarian killing continued, as 47 bodies bearing signs of torture were found in the city, a government official said.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf.
