FOX/CNN: Muqtada Al Sadr Flees Baghdad

Re: FOX/CNN: Muqtada Al Sadr Flees to Iran

I'm still not sure if this is good news or bad news. If he's hiding in Iran, wouldn't he be harder to catch? If he's in Iraq, he'd do a better job of leading his army. Either way, if he lives, he'll just hide out, wait until things calm down and then reappear in a year or two.

The problem of Al Sadr won't go away until there's an Iraqi PM who has the guts to stand up to him and stop coddling him. And who put the current Iraqi government in charge?

 

Re: FOX/CNN: Muqtada Al Sadr Flees to Iran

And he has a better and more loyal army than the government does.
I'm sorry. But on the very day the Congress starts (timidly) debating the surge, which 70 percent of the people in the country and an awful big passel of brass hats think is a terrible idea. we hear on FOX NEWS than Sadr had fled in anticipation of the mighty surge?
I stopped believing in happy coincidences with these people long about the fourth terror alert back in the fall of '04.
UPDATE --
And then there's this.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/02/general-caldwell-on-iran-weapons.html

The problem is that Caldwell's in USAT this morning saying there was no political input to the briefing last weekend. The general sounds like he's being whipsawed from a couple of different directions, andit also sounds like somebody wants a new casus belli and the military's resisting it.

 

Re: FOX/CNN: Muqtada Al Sadr Flees to Iran

1. While ideally we should've taken out al-Sadr in 2004, a martyred al-Sadr would be much worse than a martyred Saddam.
2. Al-Sadr still can control his army quite well from Tehran, Najaf, Fallujah or Istanbul. See bin Laden, Osama, and Afghanistan, 1998-2001.
3. Al-Sadr sets himself up to be Christ reincarnate.
4. I really doubt al-Maliki would take al-Sadr off the do-not-kill list unless he knew that al-Sadr was safe and sound. Since most of the Iraqi government officials seem to be Iranian double agents, I doubt we have the best bead on intelligence in the country.

 

For you to question anyone's journalistic integrity defies logic.

 

I agree with everything here, with the exception of our intelligence capabilities. I think we've dumped so much money and effort into intelligence recently that we -- and even moreso, the Brits -- have a pretty good handle on what's going down.

But, I might not be suprised one bit if al Sadr died from "natural causes" within the next six months.

 

I would be utterly shocked. The Iranians want him alive. The Shia want him alive. The Sunnis want him dead, but the Iraqi government, no-kill list or not, would rather have him alive than have the Shia turn Baghdad into Bosnia in reaction to his death. And, of course, our killing him would give them all yet another reason to hate us.
It's a safer place with him alive.

 

Say this is true, and al Sadr is indeed in Tehran. Does the US pursue him? And if so, how does that go over in Iran? I doubt Iranians are going to be too welcome to the idea of our troops entering Iran (particularly Tehran) or our bombs falling there.

And if Iran isn't welcome to that idea, how does that affect our already strained relations with the Iranian government?

 

How's Banghdad any different from Bosnia now? And how will Sadr City be different from Bosnia when we throw another 20,000 in there?

And, "we" wouldn't kill him; the Iraqis would.

CJ, we MOST CERTAINLY don't follow him into Ira(q)n. Bush ain't even that stupid.

 

TBF, that was my thought too, but just seeing if any war hawks had different ideas.

I can't see how chasing down Sadr and killing him, in Iraq or Iran, would save us any trouble. Crippling his army? Yes. But killing him does nothing but make him a martyr for the cause, as others have already said.

The Iraqis have to kill him. Not us.

 

Chasing al-Sadr into Iran just gives 70 million Iranians more reason to support the Islamic regime.

 

Baghdad's different from Bosnia in a lot of ways-- I can think of a couple thousand ways right off the bat-- and the fact that there are (at least) four armed sides to the conflict is only the most important. Kill Sadr and see just how many other ways it's different. Sadr City could be a lot worse than Bosnia, or Baghdad.
And 3bags, never EVER preface a thought with the notion that this crew couldn't/wouldn't do something. They will do anything.