The posturing in Najaf continues. The US seems intent on destroying the village in order to save it.

Doubts over Sadr peace deal
Scepticism at rebel cleric's offer to end fighting as Iraqi military prepares for assault on Najaf

The radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was reported last night to have accepted a peace deal that could end the violent two-week uprising in Najaf and see his militia leave the city's Imam Ali Shrine. Mr Sadr's spokesman confirmed that the cleric had accepted a proposal from the Iraqi national conference to pull his fighters out of the holy city and turn his militia into a political movement. But there was scepticism whether Mr Sadr's offer was genuine or merely a negotiating tactic to forestall an imminent all-out attack on the shrine by Iraqi government forces, which were fighting the cleric's militia last night. Hours before the apparent deal was announced, the Iraqi defence minister demanded the immediate surrender of the Mahdi Army militia and said that his soldiers were preparing to attack it. Using bellicose language, Hazim al-Shaalan warned that he would "teach them a lesson they will never forget".

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Reporters get death threats from police

IRAQI police have threatened to kill every journalist working in the holy city of Najaf, where US forces are locked in a tense stand-off with Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army.

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Juan Cole and Helena Cobban both give excellent analysis on the fact that this whole battle for Najaf was set off by some Marines out to make a name for themselves with absolutely no comprehension that the could be brining the whole house of cards down on themsleves. Dumbfucks!

Muqtada declines to See Delegation
Marines Launched Attack without Approval
by Juan Cole

Alex Berenson and John Burns of the New York Times make the explosive allegation that local Marines in Najaf launched the attack on Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Militia on August 12 all on their lonesome, without direction from the Pentagon in Washington. At most, they had authorization from the American-appointed governor, Ali al-Zurfi, though he won't take responsibility for it all, either. I studied colonial history with John S. Galbraith of UCLA, who was known for emphasizing the "Man on the Spot." That is, colonial officials and military men out in Malaya or Africa often made policy without reference to London. (Much of India was acquired in this way. It is amusing to go back and read the cautions of the British cabinet to British governors-general of the 18th century not to conquer more territory without permission). If Berenson and Burns are right, American Men on the Spot are making crucial policy decisions that have the potential to affect the lives of all Americans and all Muslims. The Marines in Najaf were acting like just another militia, engaging in a local turf war with Muqtada and his men, and giving no thought to the consequences of behaving barbarically in the holy city of Najaf.

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Najaf: US command chain broken
by Helena Cobban

Yesterday evening I started to tease apart some of the political stuff that's been happening in Iraq, over the now-linked issues of Moqtada's stand-off in Najaf and the National Conference going ahead in Baghdad. Overnight, I started wondering about the decisionmaking on the US-forces side. Who on the US side had made the decision to start and then maintain the confrontation against Moqtada? I wondered. The answers that are now starting to become available make depressing reading, and portray a command system for the US forces in Iraq that looks seriously broken.

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The imperfect media storm or George Bush and the Temple of Doom

In Iraq right now, the Bush administration is trapped in a Rube Goldberg-style machine of its own making as our confused and ludicrous maneuvers in Najaf have recently shown -- first, the threats of no negotiations; then the taking of the holy cemetery (with its two million dead); next the withdrawal of our forces from the cemetery; then an official position, in Colin Powell's words, of "squeezing" Najaf, that is, al-Sadr and his followers in the Shrine of Imam Ali (think siege), but quietly leaving open an entryway for food and reinforcements to arrive, followed by negotiations, their breakdown, the resending of our troops into the cemetery, and more "bloody" fighting, followed by a decision to pull back U.S. forces and send mainly Iraqi ones into the areas around the Shrine; not to speak of an initial implicit threat that American troops would take the Shrine, followed by the threat that Iraqi troops would be sent in to take the Shrine, followed by promises that the Shrine would not be touched, and so on and so forth. The fact is, there are probably no military actions the Bush administration can now take in Iraq, whether an "Iraqi face" is put on them or not, which are likely to work. In Najaf, for instance, our soldiers kill large numbers of Iraqi "enemies" with few casualties, each set of deaths a visible military victory; while elsewhere in response resistance only spreads. As we "squeeze" Najaf, Sadrism bursts to life in other cities and, barely reported in our media, all sorts of protests burst forth. To offer just a few recent examples -- Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite vice-president of the interim government in Baghdad and one of the few figures in it with any public support, vehemently criticized American assaults on Najaf as "uncivilized" and called for the withdrawal of American troops; the deputy governnor of Basra, which British troops have evidently largely ceased patrolling for the time being, called for southern secession from a Baghdad "responsible for the Najaf clashes"; the top Sunni religious body, "the Association of Muslim Scholars issued a fatwa, or religious edict, forbidding Muslims from offering any support to the forces of 'occupation'"; like half the provincial council for Najaf governate, the deputy governor of Najaf, Jawdat Kadhim Najam al-Quraishi, appointed by the Americans, resigned in protest against the assault, saying, "I resign from my post denouncing all the US terrorist operations that they are doing against this holy city." What we may be seeing, as Paul Rogers comments, is a new "quasi-nationalist cause… starting to emerge that transcends the confessional communities and is becoming united in common opposition to the United States occupation and the Iyad Allawi regime. If this is indeed so, then a transition from insurgency to a more general uprising is certainly possible."

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