Saturday, October 28, 2006

Who's Who in Iraq

A short closeup look at one of the players in Iraq gives us a real good reason to believe that we have "been too long at the fair".
When U.S. and Iraqi forces swept into Baghdad’s Sadr City slum this week, they were unsuccessfully chasing one of the most dangerous men in the city — a rogue Shiite militiaman who is a hero to his fighters and a feared killer to the capital’s Sunni population.

Two of the wanted man’s neighbors said the Mahdi Army commander, known as Abu Diraa, Arabic for Father of the Shield, actually is Ismail al-Lami, the father of at least a dozen children from two marriages.

Short, muscular, bearded and with a darker skin than most Iraqis, Abu Diraa cannot read or write and once earned a living as a fishmonger. Like many Sadr City residents, the death squad leader hails from the southern province of Maysan.

“If he had some education, he would have made a good leader. He is brave and serious,” said Amer al-Husseini, a Shiite cleric and a senior Baghdad aide of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the spiritual leader of the Mahdi Army.
We want the Iraqi government to get rid of people like this, overlooking the fact that people like this are al-Maliki's base.. He can no more move against him than Our Dear Embattled leader can move against radical whackos like James Dobson. And our troops will have no better luck against his like because of this attitude in the Iraqi people.
“I don’t care what they say about him,” Kadhim al-Mohammedawi said. “It is enough for me that he killed Americans in defense of Sadr City. Everyone loves him.”
Someone explain to me again why we are still in Iraq.

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