Moktada al-Sadr has been fearlessly directing his war against the Government of Iraq and the U.S., from Iran. The American media has largely reported this business as another Tet Offensive, but it is getting harder to put the shine on this dim bulb. The AP does its best. "Twelve Militants Die as Violence Increases." That "violence increases" part was just to let us know that the news is very bad. Now here is the story:
A U.S. military spokesman says 12 criminal fighters have been killed during an "uptick" in clashes in Baghdad's main Shiite district of Sadr City.
The announcement Sunday comes after anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned he will declare war if a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown against his followers is not stopped.
Lt. Col. Steve Stover says "there was an uptick in violence in comparison with the past couple of weeks."
The deadliest strike was when seven militants attacked a U.S. checkpoint just before 8 a.m. in Sadr City. He says U.S. troops killed the heavily armed men, then killed two other snipers firing at them from a rooftop.
Stover says three other militants were killed while trying to plant roadside bombs earlier in Sadr City.
So what we have here is twelve of Moktada's attacking U.S. soldiers and getting, well, dead. Apart from the silly bit about the "uptick", there is not a shred of evidence that violence is increasing.
The New York Times, amazingly enough, has an honest accounting.
Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government’s monthlong military operation against the fighters.
By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.
Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr City Mosque, he threatened to declare “war until liberation” against the government if fighting against his militia forces continued.
But it was difficult to tell whether his words posed a real threat or were a desperate effort to prove that his group was still a feared force, especially given that his militia’s actions in Basra followed a pattern seen again and again: the Mahdi militia battles Iraqi government troops to a standstill and then retreats.
Why his fighters have clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown.
Well, let me give you a hint: firing a couple of shots and then running like Hell is all they got. With a little air support, the Iraqi army is turning Sadr's ass into oatmeal. He has lost popular support in Iraq, and even the Iranians are getting tired of him. Mr. Maliki's government is crushing Sadr, and it's hard even for the AP to turn that into bad news.
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