Sadrist welcomes the troops

Sadrist welcomes the troops

'New troops may leave Iraq in coffins' | Herald Sun: "Now we know that the occupation forces the supporters of terrorism. They don't want stability of this country, they want to divide it, Increasing the number of foreign troops is a stab in the heart for the sovereignty of the elected government," said a spokesman for radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

If that is the official Shiite line - that they want a united Iraq makes one wonder why we keeping hearing about Shiite dead squads, who probably in retaliation for the crimes of the fathers of Sunni ex-establishment, seem to take a daily toll of lives without explanation. If sectarian death squads are not finished as a strategy, how can the country hope to be independent and united?

Of course Iraq has every conceivable right of independence. The Iraqi government can ask the American forces to depart any day. The murders leave the government themselves highly exposed, so they are not going to ask the Americans to leave. So we have a Shiite government essentially opposed to Shiite vigilantes who hunt down those they blame for the deaths of their parents, brothers and sisters.

The solution is to partition the countries of Iraq into separate productive provinces, and a common space around Baghdad under UN military protection backed by the US and UK if the Iraqi Government want to maintain it. Of course all Iraq belongs to the Iraqi - with the exception of those who are enacting this dreadful sectarian murder. It is in the interests of a civilization for it to protect itself from this cancer. If Sadrist concerns are that it is American presence causing Shiite death squads, I think they need to prove it as the target seems to be Sunni Iraqis, not just Americans.