{"id":477,"date":"2004-08-09T22:50:58","date_gmt":"2004-08-09T22:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:44","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:44","slug":"more_sadr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=477","title":{"rendered":"More Sadr"},"content":{"rendered":"

In light of my earlier piece criticizing John Quiggins claim<\/a> that the fighting in Najaf constitutes a ‘war crime,’ let’s go to Omar, at Iraq the Model<\/a> (hat tip Instapundit<\/a>):<\/p>\n

The chief of Najaf IP, brigadier Ghalib Al Jazaeri was interviewed by Al Sharqyia TV today and gave some important statements. Mr. Ghalib confirmed the IP control over the majority Najaf and said that Al Mahdi militia are besieged in small areas. He also said that most of them are surrendering and that among the 1200 captured till now there are 1000 from outside Najaf (Basra, Kut, Amarah, Baghdad) and 4 of them were Iranians who confessed that they have joined the Mahdi army.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…his statement that most of the thugs were from outside Najaf rule out all the claims that this is an uprising, as if it was so then we would\u2019ve seen the people of the city themselves revolting in large numbers but the fact is that Muqtada has gathered his criminals from many cities and focused on Najaf and Baghdad only because he knew he wouldn\u2019t find enough people to support him had he depended on the people of Najaf alone. While the fights in other cities were small compared to Baghdad and Najaf and there was absolutely no fights in the rural areas which shows that the distribution of fighters was planned to focus on important areas only, and this ensures more media coverage which in my mind is one of the main goals of such movement, as it\u2019s clearly supported and planned by outside parties which are dying to show Iraq as an unstable and hopeless place. Besides we all saw how the people of Najaf were delighted to see the IP control the city again in the previous revolt after many days of fighting. Also an uprising is a reaction rather than a planned action and here the percentage of the fighters from outside the city show clearly that this is closer to a planned revolt.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that Quiggin’s criticism was centered on the notion that we were fighting the residents of the community who were engaged in a spontaneous uprising based on the poor conditions and aimed at ousting the foreign occupiers.<\/p>\n

Assuming Omar’s claim is true – and he’s closer to the action than John or I – my only comment must be that facts can be such annoying things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In light of my earlier piece criticizing John Quiggins claim that the fighting in Najaf constitutes a ‘war crime,’ let’s go to Omar, at Iraq the Model (hat tip Instapundit): The chief of Najaf IP, brigadier Ghalib Al Jazaeri was interviewed by Al Sharqyia TV today and gave some important statements. Mr. Ghalib confirmed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}