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POPSIraq Orders Sunni Gunmen In Baghdad Area To Disarm
Cont.... The councils help man checkpoints and guard neighborhoods, playing a major role in turning the tide against the Sunni insurgency. Your request is being processed... Iraq Orders Sunni Gunmen In Baghdad Area To Disarm digg Share this on Facebook Huffpost - Iraq Orders Sunni Gunmen In Baghdad Area To Disarm stumble reddit del.ico.us ShareThis RSS SINAN SALAHEDDIN | March 29, 2009 10:00 AM EST | AP Compare other versions » Compare and versions I Like ItI Don’t Like It Read More: Iraq, Sunni Gunmen, Sunnis, Warwire, World News Be the First to Submit This Story to DiggBuzz up! U.S. troops take position on a major street after a gunfight sparked Saturday at the dominantly Sunni neighborhood of Fadhil in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, March 29, 2009. U.S. and Iraqi troops exchanged gunfire Sunday with Sunni militants in central Baghdad in a second day of clashes following the arrest of a local leader of Sunni security volunteers who had broken with al-Qaida. (AP Photo/Ha
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POPSCracks in Iraq time to leave: we spent good Chinese money on these insurgents, but they won't stay bought--Act 2 in the war on iraq is just getting started, I hope we miss it.
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POPS Democracy In Iraq Fifteen million Iraqis are voting today. Because of the strong turnout, the voting time was extended. And I saw a stat on one of the cable channels that there are over 400 women running for office in this election. Historic.
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POPS Iran ----- 1, West ----- 0 . . . . . of the majority Sunni world – provide military and financial support to Iran’s former arch enemies – Sunnis – in the form of aiding Hamas in its attacks on Israel from Gaza. Iran has preyed on the grassroots sympathy that is growing in all sectors of the Muslim world. With growing unanimity, the “cause” of the Muslim civilians in Gaza, decimated by Israeli counter-attacks, is gathering a huge political anger in the local Arab citizenry, bolstered by footage and photographs of dead children, destroyed Mosques, hospitals and schools (even a United Nations facility) and rolling Israeli tanks, place and troops. The shameful fact that Hamas hides behind civilian targets to launch their rockets into Israel is regrettably lost in translation. Iran has managed to foment a wedge between local average Arabs and their leaders in major regional powers, particularly in Egypt.
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POPS War's Over Indicator #52 Berlin-style walls put in place to keep Shias and Sunnis apart, have been gradually coming down. A 5-metre high barrier separating the Shia area of Abu Safeen and the Sunni zone of al-Fudal, was removed almost two months ago. Violence has yet to return. Baghdad’s civic planners seem intent on making connections. But the small steps they have taken so far pale next to the grand plan for a metro. A train line under Baghdad was first flagged under Saddam Hussein during the 1970s, but shelved owing to three decades of war, blockades and invasion. One of the new proposed subway lines would run 11 miles from Shia-dominated Sadr City in the east to Adhamiya in north Baghdad. The other would traverse 13 miles and link mixed central Baghdad to the primarily Sunni western suburbs. Both lines would have 20 stations each and run through a patchwork quilt of sectarian neighbourhoods, which largely remain divided, despite the security improvements.
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POPSDon't Ask, Don't Tell, Do Kill It is not on the top of our priorities list, which is occupied by issues of terror, kidnapping and killing," said the judge. Doing it? Or preventing it?? :confused: Persecution of gays will stop only if can abandon centuries-old prejudices. They would have to acknowledge that human rights don't cover only the humans they like.
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POPSIraq disintegrating from ethnic cleansing The flight of the middle class started about six months after the invasion in 2003 as it became clear Iraq was becoming more, not less, violent. They moved to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The suicide bombing campaign was largely directed against Shias who only began to retaliate after they had taken over the government in May last year. Interior Ministry forces arrested, tortured and killed Sunnis. But a decisive step towards sectarian civil war took place when the Shia Al-Askari shrine in Samarra was blown up on 22 February this year. Some 1,300 Sunni were killed in retaliation. Kadm Darwish Ali, a policeman from Baquba and now also a refugee, said: "Everything got worse after Samarra. I had been threatened with death before but now I felt every time I appeared in the street I was likely to die."
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POPSChristians flee Mosul after violence Since the US-led invasion of 2003 more than 200 Christians have been killed across Iraq and a string of churches attacked, with the violence intensifying in recent weeks, particularly in the north. Hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites have also died in sectarian violence since Saddam Hussein's ouster. Around 800,000 Christians lived in Iraq at the time of the US-led invasion, but the number has since shrunk by around a third as the faithful have fled the country.
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POPSWhen is a holocaust not a holocaust? (cont.)Thus, the number of people available for being killers or victims is markedly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in the country (another good indication of progress, n'est-ce pas?). Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down; and the powerful movement of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has had a cease-fire in effect for many months, unconnected to the surge. On top of all this, US soldiers, in the face of numerous "improvised explosive devices" on the roads, have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like ... well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.
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POPSAnbar is Iraq's once again In a day when more people seem to be concerned with the pregnancy of Bristol Palin than with hurricane Gustav, this story has barely made a blip. I suspect that with much of our media it wouldn't have seemed important.
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POPSBiden's Response to 9/11 Even TNR is amused at Biden's foreign policy gravitas... First, Iranians aren’t Arabs. They’re Persians, as both Arabs and Iranians would quickly point out to anyone ignorant of the distinction. They have no relation linguistically or culturally, except that both are predominantly Islamic. One would expect a foreign-policy expert to know at least that much. Team Obama ridiculed John McCain when he inadvertently mixed up Sunnis and Shi’ites, but this is much more fundamental. ...a man who thinks it appropriate to send hundreds of millions of dollars — “no strings attached” — to a terror-sponsoring regime in order to make America a supplicant of radicals is no foreign-policy genius.
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POPSWhat counts as 'success' in Iraq? Cont.... This was widely predicted before the war was started, and it is now apparent. All of Iraq's leaders, including the president, a Kurd, are friendly with Iran and regard it as an important ally. In Bush circles, this new prominence for Iran is never linked to the war, as if occurring by itself.
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POPSGeneral: Timeline is most secure Iraq strategy "Brigadier Gen. Sean McFarland…credited the ‘growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al-Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias …’ as the main reason for the turn around in Al Anbar"
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POPSBusting the Surge Myth Cont.... The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.
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POPSMcCain gaffes pile up; critics pile on McCain's mistakes raise a serious, if uncomfortable question: Are the gaffes the result of his age? And what could that mean in the Oval Office? Voters, thinking about their own relatives, can be expected to scrutinize McCain’s debate performances for signs of slippage
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