The Associate Press reported today from Baghdad: Anti-American Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers Saturday to defy government orders to surrender their weapons, as U.S. jets struck Shiite extremists near Basra to bolster a faltering Iraqi offensive against gunmen in the city.“We can’t fight our brothers in the Mahdi Army, so we came here to submit our weapons,” one policeman said on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Muqtada al-Sadr had been reported to be working with the Americans and the Iraqi government during these past months since the American surge. Now all of that has changed. This is not surprising to me. There never was an adequate explanation for al-Sadr’s co-operation.
The real test has finally come and the Iraqi government has failed. We are in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. If John McCain has his way we will continue to have troops fighting this war indefinitely. It is a tragic loss of American life. Both George W. Bush and John McCain could not be more wrong on this waste of blood and treasure.
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