Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army Militiamen Slowly Resurface

LA Times:

After two years, ex-militiamen are being seen again in Baghdad neighborhoods. Officials fear the shadowy group could take advantage of Iraq's festering political crisis and U.S. troop withdrawals.

Read the whole story: LA Times

Comments

[duxguts]

01:05 AM on 06/30/2010

Mission accomplished!

[Whinger]

07:00 PM on 06/29/2010

The comeback kid returns, he will not be denied...!

[Usama]

02:36 PM on 06/29/2010

How dare they exert political influence in their own country!!!

[atlantis1star]

01:05 PM on 06/29/2010

Wonderful, will this be the excuse to leave our Army in country, Nerve mind, we are leaving 50,000 troops there and calling it a withdrawal.

I always said, Iraq will join with Iran, now that we destroyed the detente there, and turn south towards Israel.

[MarkMad]

09:38 PM on 06/29/2010

That’s the amount of military personnel with have in each base. We do have 800 military bases in 150 countries.

[Imo Verit]

12:18 PM on 06/29/2010

Its hard to hide a million men.

[bhopal-carbide]

12:13 PM on 06/29/2010

no one saw this coming...

[naschkatze]

07:12 PM on 06/29/2010

You forgot this: : - )

[bklynsparrow]

11:39 AM on 06/29/2010

We never should have invaded. This is a fight that would have happened even if Saddam had died of old age or illness. But we wouldn't have wasted lives, time, and money, and a lot more Iraqi citizens would still be alive.

[MikeDu]

11:36 AM on 06/29/2010

Gee, you combined 'shadowy' and 'festering' in the same sentence... Oooooh!

This is probably related to the Iraqi government's recent turning on the 'Awakening Groups'. They've become reluctant to pay them, hesitant to integrate them into the civil forces, and there are reports of Awakening Group leaders being assassinated - and its not entirely sure by which side.

[TYRANNASAURUS]

11:31 AM on 06/29/2010

I told you so..........this is just the beginning............soon as the Americans are gone.........they will be back at top speed fighting their religious wars again..... it's not new........it's what they've been doing for the last 1400 years..........tell that to the wasted 4000 Americans that died there............ in vain.

[MikeDu]

11:53 AM on 06/29/2010

"What they've been doing for the last 1400 years" is a phrase usually used by people trying to let the U.S. off the hook. Care to guess how common mixed-religion marriages and mixed communities were before the invasion? Care to guess how common marketplace bombings were before the invasion? So its worse tha you imply, we didn't just fail to improve the place we made it demonstrably worse.

[sagasseous]

12:03 PM on 06/29/2010

Hey wait a minute - we killed Hussein's date raping son. Didn't that make it all worthwhile?

Sadr's family has been at the forefront of the Iraqi Shia for a couple hunfred years. He wasn't going to be marginalized.

[omobob]

11:22 AM on 06/29/2010

You didn't really think the Shiites in Iraq, being a majority and having been under the boot of Sadaam feels its there turn now. Sharing power with non arab kurds and Sunnis cant be sitting well.

[sagasseous]

12:35 PM on 07/01/2010

Plus there's a split between Iranian influenced Shia, who spent time in exile in Iran, often guided by their commercial interests,(Maliki and Chalabi) and the less affluent Shia who didn't take a Tehran sabbatical and who support the down home fundamentalism of.Sadr

[Eidolas]

10:48 AM on 06/29/2010

From the L.A. Times: "Officials fear the shadowy group could take advantage of Iraq's festering political crisis and U.S. troop withdrawals."

Ya think so?

[omobob]

11:24 AM on 06/29/2010

It is, of course, what will happen as soon as the combat troops are gone. Its what Iraqis have been waiting for.