Sadr slams Bush over troop withdrawal

Source: AFP

Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday lashed out at US President George W. Bush for refusing to set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

Sadr, known for his anti-American stand, has not been seen in the public for several months but continues to issue statements through a powerful movement that included 32 lawmakers and the Mahdi Army militia.

"Your occupation is unjustified and a sort of dictatorship that takes a person nowhere," Sadr said in a statement issued under his seal and read to Iraq's parliament by lawmaker Liqa al-Yassin.

Demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the cleric said it was only Bush's "stubborness" that was keeping American forces in Iraq more than four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.



Read more: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/070428/world/iraq_unrest_sadr

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"What chaos would befall us if you withdrew the armies of the dark forces from our lands?" the cleric's statement demanded. "What more chaos could we be in than we are already in?

Their shame knows no bounds.

America out of Iraq NOW!

Just saying that the Wingnuts will spin that agreement on fact between Sadr and reasonable people around the world as proof that we are all pacifists of terrorists and big scary men with big scary beards.

Saddam Hussein ever did in his entire reign.

How many more innocents will Bush's "stubborness" murder for oil dominance? :grr:

Any time the enemy agrees with the opposition, it doesn't look good. Just one more argument for the far righters to use. Doesn't matter much whether the Iraq Study wanted timetables, or whether it's a good thing that Sadr agrees.

Personally, he's much less my enemy than George W. Bush is.

a good chunk of controlling stock in the Baghdad peace market. Petraeus is a smart man but is applying a military formula to an non-negotiable circumstance. It must be like putting nylons on a puma.

More despairing is that the bill Bush will certainly veto gives him a way out of the mess he's made. His stubborn refusal not to take it is a glimpse of how permanent the PNAC folks want the U.S. presence to be. And needless to say, there's scant coverage of that angle in the MSM.

Sadr's spiritual/political cosmos is alien turf for me, but he has more support in the Middle East than George Bush will ever have.

Which doesn't auger well for a successful "surge."

John McCain, phone home.

"What more chaos could we be in than we are already in?"

N/T

Yes, that's a low bar, but still