He’s Back
Anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has returned home to Iraq from his self-imposed exile in Iran, delivering a speech urging support for the new Maliki government and resistance against the U -- but not necessarily through armed struggle.
Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has returned home to Iraq from his self-imposed exile in Iran, delivering a speech urging support for the new Maliki government and resistance against the U.S. — but not necessarily through armed struggle. –JCL
Strong Journalism, Rooted in TruthReuters:
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged a sea of rapturous followers Saturday to resist all occupiers of Iraq and oppose the United States, but not necessarily with arms.
In his first speech since his homecoming Wednesday after years of self-imposed exile in Iran, the one-time firebrand burnished his anti-U.S. credentials and urged supporters to give Iraq’s new government led by Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki a chance.
“We are still fighters,” said Sadr, who led two uprisings against the U.S. military after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has called for an earlier U.S. withdrawal than the agreed deadline of the end of this year.
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A U.S. drone strike and air assaults by Pakistani military forces killed 38 people this weekend in tribal areas near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, official sources reported Sunday.
The official American reaction to the coordinated attacks in Kabul, the Afghan capital, as well as at Jalalabad airbase, and in Paktika and Logar Provinces, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of guerrilla warfare.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has branded the Taliban’s 18-hour siege of Kabul and places across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday an intelligence failure and called for an investigation into NATO security operations.
Pointing to "the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans" as one key reason for their decision, Taliban leaders in Afghanistan put the kibosh on plans to meet with U.S. envoys, releasing a statement on Thursday explaining the change of plans.
Claims made by NATO that Pakistan is in cahoots with the Afghan Taliban are tantamount to "old wine in an even older bottle," according to Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. However, this particular batch of wine represents thousands of mandatory conversations (read: interrogations) versus Khar's official denial.
In the deadliest day for American troops since the war in Afghanistan began almost 10 years ago, 30 Americans and seven Afghan commandos died Saturday when the Chinook helicopter they were in was shot down by the Taliban.
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