BAGHDAD – Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday ordered his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement calling the order “a step in the right direction” towards resolving six days of violence sparked by operations against al-Sadr’s backers in the oil-rich southern city of Basra.
Al-Sadr’s nine-point statement was issued by his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf and broadcast through loudspeakers at Shiite mosques.
So, once again, Sadr recognizes he cannot win.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes the same story and says:
When the Iraqi government finally took the long-expected action to establish control of Basra after the British pullback left it in the hands of militias and gangsters, suddenly the media declared that the country had reached the brink of collapse. They highlighted stories of defections from the Iraqi military and opined that the surge had failed. Moqtada al-Sadr would finally achieve his goal of controlling the South and would expose the Baghdad government as a house of cards.
Guess which side just sued for peace?
Really. Edgets into some detail that the press missed in all of this, and says.
Did our media give anyone this context? No. They reported it as some kind of spontaneous eruption of rebellion without noting at all that a nation can hardly be considered sovereign while its own security forces cannot enter a large swath of its own territory. And in the usual defeatist tone, they reported that our mission in Iraq had failed without waiting to see what the outcome of the battle would be.
Almost like there was a pattern, here, or something. I can’t quite put my finger on it, though. Maybe soemthing todo with the election next November… but it couldn’t be that…. I mean, could it?
Tags: aids, Baghdad, Basra, cards, election, fight, Hot Air, Iraq, Men, military, MSNBC, NY, oil, Press Bias, rich, Sadr, South, The Surge
