http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53057-2004Apr5.html
Note the targeting of ambulances, systematic shooting of kids in the head - sound familiar?
Now _thats_ the Israeli influence. The effect of training by Isreali advisers.
-Brad
From:
Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com>
8:07 AM
Subject:
[lbo-talk] Sadr's popularity
To:
Repeatedly, the Western media describes al Sadr as a "minor cleric" with a small following. The implication is that a few hundred crazies, at best, are crazily following a malcontent. Obviously, al Sadr is able to field a large number of dedicated people -- both as protesters and fighters. Large enough and sufficiently armed and organized to create the unmistakable impression of a micro Tet offensive last Sunday.
Only a taste, I suspect, of what they can do .
Juan Cole addresses the matter of al Sadr's popularity and impact --
...
US television cable news is doing its best to obscure the real issues here.
1. They keep asking where Muqtada is and calling him a "fugitive." Muqtada announced that he is in his father's mosque in Kufa, and there is no reason to doubt this. He hasn't fled and his whereabouts are well known.
2. Talking heads both from Iraq and from the ranks of the US retired officers keep attempting to maintain that Muqtada's movement is small and marginal. One speaker claimed that Muqtada has only 10,000 men.
In fact that is the size of his formal militia. Muqtada's movement is like the layers of an onion. You have 10,000 militiamen. But then you have tens of thousands of cadres able to mobilize neighborhoods. Then you have hundreds of thousands of Sadrists, followers of Muqtada and other heirs of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. Then you have maybe 5 million Shiite theocrats who sympathize with Muqtada's goals and rhetoric, about a third of the Shiite community. The Sadrists will now try to shift everything so that the 5 million become followers, the hundreds of thousands become cadres, and the tens of thousands become militiamen.
[...]
full at -
<http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#108119698951121964>