An Iraqi Time Bomb

[Geee]

American Spectator:

"Thank you, my dearest, and may Allah preserve you and watch over you…"

With these words, Muqtada al-Sadr thanked an unidentified supporter who posted on the radical cleric's website intentions to be martyred in the name of Islam, ideology and Iraq. "The infidel occupier," is officially on notice that the current deferment of Sadr's Mehdi Army is subject to America's presence on the ground, and the firebrand's personal caprice.

Over the years, Muqtada al-Sadr's private paramilitary, the Mehdi Army, has posed the greatest threat to Iraqi security since two 500 lb. bombs ended Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's reign of terror at the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the opinion of the Pentagon, the Mehdi Army remains the country's "most dangerous accelerant of potentially self-sustaining sectarian violence."

The "army" is the product of Sadr's personal charisma, and the work of his late father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated by Saddam Hussein after developing the most dynamic human infrastructure network amidst Iraq's disenfranchised Shi'a majority. Initially conceived in response to the US-led invasion, a few thousand embittered, if inadequately armed, young men quickly swelled ranks to some 60,000 radicals, trained and armed with Iranian support. Ferocious street battles witnessed in 2004 and 2008 confirmed that the Mehdi Army had access to rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and the ubiquitous Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Although foreign fighters operating under the banner of al-Qaeda in Iraq drew most of the international headlines, Sadr's native-born movement was the first Shi'a militia to organize on the ground, and benefited from a hierarchy of rank in a country where most men have undergone military training.

Sadr's stamp of approval on his personal website's belligerent commentary should come as little surprise. Recently, he has ramped up the anti-American rhetoric as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki weighs a decision to request that some of America's 47,000 troops stay in Iraq beyond January 1, 2012 -- a deadline agreed upon between both countries in 2008.

[Sabre86]

Why Muqtada al-Sadr is still above ground wasting oxygen is beyond me.

 

We should have put a bullet in his head a long time ago.