August 24, 2004, The Kabuki that is My Nightmare... continues
Several days after what looked like a resolution at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Iraq, Moqtada al-"Baby" Sadr says he's "wiilling to negotiate". Again, the Iraqi defense minister says that Iraqi forces will reach "the door of the shrine" today, and if the Mehdi Army does not surrender, will be wiped out by American... er, Iraqi forces.
Doubtless, there will be a truce for an hour and half or two, to watch the Iraq-Paraguay Olympic semi-final soccer match, before going back to the regularly scheduled exchange of gunfire.
I understand why USA forces are there: we broke it, we bought it. Amazingly, we still (apparently) haven't managed to destroy the Shrine of Imam Ali. There is, of course, still plenty of time to do it irremediable damage, and get the world destroyed. We're down to sheer luck preventing that from happening.
And at the end of the day, Sadr, who should have simply been another urban street thug, has been propelled into the national forefront... by us, and will thus have to be reckoned with in the course of Iraq's bright and promising future.
[Ed.: None of this matters, of course, because a group of liars on the Bush family payroll got together and made up stories about John Kerry, stories contradicted by their own statements. You see-- that's what matters. They can't all be lying-- because there are so many of them. It must be the unanimous evidence of the military records that are wrong.]