Redstate

By haystack Posted in War — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It seems Mookie Al Sadr (h/t Blackfive's own Uncle Jimbo for the nickname] is a little fearful for his safety.

Aww....poor babutschka...I really feel bad for the poor innocent victim of the latest Security Surge in Iraq. After all,

The cleric has publicly distanced himself from violence blamed on his Mahdi Army supporters, who are described by the US as the biggest threat to the security of Iraq.

More below the fold...

Moqtada al-Sadr has moved his family to a secure location because of fears he will become the target of a security sweep of Baghdad, it was reported today.

News of the radical cleric's decision came as the US military said it had detained a suspected death squad leader.

Aides to Mr Sadr described the arrest of the man, named as Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, as a "provocation", saying he was a spokesman for their movement.

"We are angry," Abdul-Mehdi al-Matiri told Reuters. "This is a kind of revenge. Sheikh Darraji deals with the media. He is not a military man."

That is just too rich for words. The bob and weave with the term "civilian" clearly gets traction when looking for a little love from the media and a little sympathy for the cause.

I consider anyone working for the Mahdi Army machine to be complicit in every way, and liable to the same justice as any of the others. As has been argued many times before, a uniform continues to be unfairly established as the measuring stick for who should be considered the enemy and who should not.

As for Mookie himself:

In an interview with Mr Sadr, published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica today, the cleric said 400 of his men had already been arrested.

"For this reason, I have moved my family to a secure location. I even have had a will drawn up, and I move continuously in a way that only few can know where I am," he was quoted as saying.

"But even if I were to die, Mahdi would continue to exist. Men can be killed. Faith and ideas cannot," he said.

Mr Sadr said his men would not fight during the Islamic month of Muharram, which marks the death of Muhammad's grandson Hussein, but that afterwards "we'll see".

We'll see, huh?

Well, we'll see then what we shall see, should we come across the poor boy in the streets of Baghdad. Oh wait, he is trying to be the good guy for his people...

The cleric has publicly distanced himself from violence blamed on his Mahdi Army supporters, who are described by the US as the biggest threat to the security of Iraq.

Frankly, the best thing that could happen for Iraq would be for the militias to be disbanded and this Mookie nutjob to be looking for inspiration from the business end of an 8 by 8 cell.