YID With LID: Obama, Sunnis and the Shiites Have Been Allies in Terrorist Acts

YID With LID

Sorry OBAMA, Sunnis and The Shiites HAVE Been Allies in Terrorist Acts Posted: 30 Mar 2008 12:00 AM CDT It is well known that the Sunni and Shiite Muslims hate each other even more than Hilary Clinton hates the truth. Even Barack Obama knows that. So when John McCain made what was perceived as a gaffe, mixing up Sunni and Shiite its no wonder that the Senator is harping on it to try to get out from under the scandals surrounding the hatred spewing from his campaign including his Anti-American preacher and his Anti-Semitic military adviser and campaign co-Chair Merrill A. McPeak (pictured left). The real issue, ignored by Barry Obama is the question of whether it was a gaffe at all. You see there is one thing that the Sunni's and The Shiites hate more than each other and that is the Great Satan, the United States of America. And more times that the Jr Senator from Illinois would want to admit, the Sunni's and Shiites have teamed up to commit terrorist acts: The Sunni-Shiite Terror Network By AMIR TAHERI March 29, 2008 The American presidential election campaign took a bizarre theological turn recently when Barack Obama accused John McCain of not being able to distinguish Sunnis from Shiites. The exchange started when Sen. McCain suggested that the Islamic Republic in Iran, a Shiite power, may be helping al Qaeda, a Sunni outfit, in its murderous campaign in Iraq and elsewhere. Basing its position on received wisdom, the Obama camp implied that Sunnis and Shiites, divided as they are by deep doctrinal differences, could not come together to fight the United States and its allies. The truth is that Sunni and Shiite extremists have always been united in their hatred of the U.S., and in their desire to "bring it to destruction," in the words of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. The majority of Muslims does not share that hatred and have no particular problem with the U.S. It is the country most visited by Muslim tourists and it attracts the largest number of Muslim students studying abroad. But to understand the problem with extremists, it is important to set aside the Sunni-Shiite divide and focus on their common hatred of America. Theology is useless here. What we are dealing with is politics. For Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, the slogan "Death to America" was as important as the traditional device of Islam "Allah Is The Greatest" – hence his insistence that it be chanted at all public meetings and repeated after each session of the daily prayers. And to that end, Khomeinists have worked with anyone, including brother-enemy Sunnis or even Marxist atheists. The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hezbollah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services. The Syrian regime is Iran's closest ally, despite the fact that Iranian mullahs regard the Alawite minority that dominates it as heretics or worse. Today in Lebanon, Tehran's surrogate, Hezbollah, is in league with a Maronite Christian faction, led by ex-Gen. Michel Aoun, in opposition to a majority bloc that favors close ties with the U.S. For more than a quarter century, Tehran has been host to the offices of more than three dozen terrorists organizations, from the Colombian FARC to the Palestinian Hamas and passing by half a dozen Trotskyite and Leninist outfits. It also finances many anti-American groups and parties of both extreme right and extreme left in Europe and the Americas. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has bestowed the Muslim title of "brother" on Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Communist North Korea is the only country with which the Islamic Republic maintains close military-industrial ties and holds joint annual staff sessions. George Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese maverick who led a campaign of terror in Paris in the 1980s on behalf of Tehran, was a Christian. So was Anis Naqqache, who led several hit-teams sent to kill Iranian exile opposition leaders. For years, and until a recent change of policy, TehranTurkish Republic. Why? Tehran's displeasure with Turkish membership of NATO and friendship with the U.S. financed and offered shelter to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Marxist movement fighting to overthrow the Yes, Mr. Obama might ask, but what about Sunni-Shiite cooperation? The Islamic Republic has financed and armed the Afghan Sunni Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) since the 1990s. It's also financed the Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS), a Sunni political-terrorist outfit in Algeria between 1992 and 2005. In 1993, a senior Iranian delegation, led by the then Islamic Parliament Speaker Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, attended the Arab-Muslim Popular Congress organized by Hassan al-Turabi, nicknamed "The Pope of Islamist Terror," in Khartoum. At the end of this anti-American jamboree a nine-man "Coordinating Committee" was announced. Karrubi was a member, along with such Sunni eminences as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Turabi and the Algerian Abdallah Jaballah. The fact that Karrubi was a Shiite mullah did not prevent him from sitting alongside Sunni sheikhs. In 1996, a suicide attack claimed the lives of 19 American servicemen in Al Khobar, eastern Saudi Arabia. The operation was carried out by the Hezbollah in Hejaz, an Iranian-financed outfit, with the help of the Sunni militant group "Sword of the Peninsula." In 2000, Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda killed 17 U.S. servicemen in a suicide attack on USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. This time, a Shiite militant group led by Sheikh al-Houti, Tehran's man in Yemen, played second fiddle in the operation. In Central Asia's Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Tehran has for years supported two Sunni movements, the Rastakhiz Islami (Islamic Awakening) and Hizb Tahrir Islami (Islamic Liberation Party). In Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, Tehran supports the Sunni Taleshi groups against the Azeri Shiite majority. The reason? The Taleshi Sunnis are pro-Russian and anti-American, while the Shiite Azeris are pro-American and anti-Russian. There are no Palestinian Shiites, yet Tehran has become the principal source of funding for radical Palestinian Sunni groups, notably Hamas, Islamic Jihad and half a dozen leftist-atheist minigroups. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh refuses to pray alongside his Iranian hosts during his visits to Tehran. But when it comes to joining Khomeinist crowds in shouting "Death to America" he is in the forefront. With Arab oil kingdoms no longer as generous as before, Iran has emerged as the chief source of funding for Hamas. The new Iranian budget, coming into effect on March 21, allocates over $2 billion to the promotion of "revolutionary causes." Much of the money will go to Hamas and the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah. In Pakistan, the Iran-financed Shiite Tehrik Jaafari joined a coalition of Sunni parties to govern the Northwest Frontier Province, until they all suffered a crushing defeat at last month's parliamentary elections. The fact that the Sunnis and Shiites in other provinces of Pakistan continued to kill each other did not prevent them from developing a joint, anti-U.S. strategy that included the revival of the Afghan Taliban and protection for the remnants of al Qaeda. Almost all self-styled "holy warriors" who go to Iraq on a mission of murder and mayhem are Sunnis. And, yet most pass through Syria, a country that, as already noted, is dominated by a sect with a militant anti-Sunni religious doctrine. Next month, Tehran will host what is billed as "The Islamic Convergence Conference," bringing together hundreds of Shiite and Sunni militants from all over the world. The man in charge, Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Taskhiri, has described the goal of the gathering to be delivering "a punch in the face of the American Great Satan." Still, Mr. Obama might ask: what about al Qaeda and Iran? The 9/11 Commission report states that Tehran was in contact with al Qaeda at various levels before the 2001 attacks. Tehran has admitted the presence of al Qaeda figures in Iran on a number of occasions, and has arranged for the repatriation of at least 13 Saudi members in the past five years. The Bin Laden family tells us that at least one of Osama's sons, Sa'ad, has lived in Iran since 2002. Reports from Iran claim that scores of Taliban leaders and several al Qaeda figures spend part of the year in a compound-style housing estate near the village of Dost Muhammad on the Iranian frontier with Afghanistan. One way to verify these claims is to allow the world media access to the area. But Tehran has declared large segments of eastern Iran a "no-go" area, even for its own state-owned media. In short, the claim that al Qaeda and the Khomeinists, not to mention other terrorist groups operating in the name of Islam, would not work together simply because they have theological differences is both naive and dangerous. Messrs. McCain and Obama do not need to know about doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The problem they face is not theological but political. All they need to know is that there are deadly and determined groups dedicated to destruction of the U.S. in the name of a perverted version of Islam, and that they need to be resisted, fought and ultimately defeated. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Condi Rice's Mid East Trip--a Sick Game of Good Cop/Bad Cop Posted: 29 Mar 2008 11:59 PM CDT Last week Vice President Dick Chaney stood in Jerusalem and announced that the US would not pressure Israel on security issues. This week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is coming to Jerusalem to tell Prime Minister Omert that Chaney doesn't know what he was talking about. Rice is coming to the Middle East to pressure Israel to risk its security by making it easier for terrorist to travel in and out of the country. Its kind of like a sick game of good cop-bad cop. I am assuming that Sderot will not be on the agenda as the "Bad Cop" believes that Israeli blood is cheap. Rice Renews Focus on Mideast Peace By MATTHEW LEE JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday she would push for an easing of Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank as she began her latest Mideast mission aimed at reviving faltering peace talks. Rice said she was looking for "real concrete progress" on several issues, including improving the movement and access of people and goods from the West Bank. Israeli checkpoints and strict travel rules have curtailed such commerce and largely crippled the Palestinian its economy. "I will spend a good deal of time on issues concerning the West Bank and issues concerning the ability to provide a better life for the people of the West Bank, including ways to improve movement and access," she told reporters on her plane en route to Israel. "The improvement of life on the ground is the piece that I think really has to be pushed forward pretty hard," Rice said before arriving and heading to dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Easing the restrictions would clear the way for economic revival projects proposed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now a Mideast peace envoy, with the strong backing of Palestinian leaders who control the West Bank. Rice planned three-way talks on Sunday with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to explore ways of easing the regulations, including turning over more security control to the Palestinian Authority in certain areas. "Obviously, there are security issues, but we do have to find ways to improve movement," she said. "There are obstacles that are not checkpoints and there are checkpoints that are obstacles. I think you have to look at both." Palestinians contend Israel, in not removing the restrictions on movement, is undermining Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate Fatah Party in their power struggle with the militant Hamas movement. Hamas seized control of Gaza last year. Israel is in a battle with Hamas, whose members have fired rockets at Israeli communities in southern Israel. Israel has retaliated with attacks that have killed scores of civilians in Gaza. Israel agreed this past week to issue more permits for Palestinian laborers and merchants, but has yet to take down any of the hundreds of West Bank checkpoints it says are necessary to stop suicide bombers. Broader peace negotiations have bogged down despite pledges from all sides to reach at least the outline of a peace deal by the time President Bush leaves office in January. On this issue, Rice said she was not coming to the region to "insert American ideas into this process." "I am not bringing the 'American paper' because I don't think that that is useful," she said at the start of her second trip to the Mideast this month. "What is useful right now is for the parties to continue what I think is a pretty fruitful discussion between them." In addition to seeing Barak and Fayyad on Sunday, Rice planned to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni before a quick trip to Amman for talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II as well as Abbas, who is currently in Jordan. Rice then returns to Jerusalem for a three-way meeting on Monday with Livni, who is leading the Israeli negotiating team, and the Palestinian's chief negotiator Ahmed Qureia. Rice later will head back to Amman for further talks with Abbas. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Israel Haters Have a Semantics Debate Posted: 29 Mar 2008 11:58 PM CDT Apparently the recent Sabeel conference of Anti-Semites and Self-hating Jews caused quite the ruckus in the "lets de-legitimize Israel Circles. On one hand you have Jeff Halper, Self-Hating Jews and a former "pen pal" Jeff along with Marc Ellis are big supporters of both the one state solution and just love to say that Israel is a Nazi State. On the other side you have Faux "Rabbi"Arthur Waskow who is a big Fan of CAIR and who received Smicha (ordination) under unusual circumstances. Waskow is almost as bad has Halper and Ellis, but he doesn't think that the haters should used the Nazi analogy. The Real questions is...does it really matter? If they are haters, they will find a way to demonize Israel any way they can. According to the CAMERA report below, the argument shows that these characters may have gone too far and the rhetoric may be softening up a bit. Sabeel's Rhetoric Questioned by Jewish Peace Activists Israeli policies are a constant source of debate within Israeli society and within the Jewish community in the United States. Rather than acknowledge the diverse opinions within these communities about Israeli policies, Christian institutions oftentimes invoke Jewish and Israeli self-criticism in a manner that legitimizes their own anti-Israel narrative, the implication being that if Israelis and Jews can unfairly criticize Israel and compare Israel as akin the Nazi regime, then Christians are free to do the same. These same institutions, however, are very unlikely to offer their readers information about Jewish or Israeli voices that would defend or even provide context to Israeli policies. Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center has proven particularly adept at enlisting American and Israeli Jews in its campaign to demonize Israel. Jewish activists, who offer a narrative of Jewish self-reform and Israeli concessions leading to an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict are a steady staple at Sabeel conferences, where sadly, very little Palestinian self-criticism is displayed. The irony is Sabeel, a group that bills itself as "The Voice of the Palestinian Christians," often uses the voices of American and Israeli Jews to make some of its most ferocious attacks on Israel. For example, Marc Ellis, director of Jewish Studies at Baylor University in Texas has appeared in front of largely Christian audiences at Sabeel conferences displaying images of a helicopter gunship flying out of the Torah to document how Israeli use of force and sovereignty has affected Jewish identity. To buttress his point, Ellis has also displayed the text of a letter written by his son to an Israeli diplomat asserting that the modern state of Israel is using force in a manner similar to the Nazi regime: If you are too ignorant to step out of your position for one second and see that the Israelis are using brute force to oppress the people, just as the Nazi regime once used against the Jewish people, then I don't think you can be helped. (The text of this letter appeared on page 81 of the September/October 2003 issue of Church & Society published by the Presbyterian Church (USA).) Professor Ellis's theme – that Jewish sovereignty and power has undermined Jewish and identity and worship – fits in with the analysis offered Sabeel's founder Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, who asserted that Zionism has corrupted Judaism in a number of venues including his book, Justice and Only Justice (Orbis, 1989). In fact, Professor Ellis helped Rev. Dr. Ateek get his doctoral dissertation – in which he asserts Zionism has corrupted Judaism – published as the previously mentioned book (Page 87, Salt & Sign: Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine 1949-1999). Predictably, Professor Ellis's critique of Jewish-power and its impact on Jewish identity is well-received at Sabeel events. Another Jewish activist whose narrative of Jewish self-reform leading to peace is Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions. Halper, (who speaks wistfully of the one-state solution which means the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state) appears at Sabeel conferences decrying Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip while downplaying Arab hostility toward Jews and Israel by portraying Palestinian violence as a resistance to oppression while failing to acknowledge to acknowledge the desire of groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to destroy Israel. In Halper's view, there is no difference between terrorists who target civilians while hiding behind civilian human shields and Israeli soldiers who try to avoid killing civilians while attacking legitimate military targets. For example, at Sabeel's October 2008 conference at Old South Church in Boston Halper told the audience If we define terrorism as killing, wounding, harming, attacking innocent civilians, Israel is greatly more culpable than the groups we call terrorists. In addition to failing to acknowledge that the use of civilians as human shields does not render legitimate military targets immune from attacks, Halper, like Marc Ellis, has also invoked the notion of Israelis-as-Nazis. During the Sabeel conference at Old SouthChurch in October, Halper said that while the Israeli public supports a two-state solution, successive Israeli governments have misled the Israeli public into thinking there is no political solution and no one to negotiate with on the Palestinian side of the conflict. They don't believe that peace is possible. The Israeli government has done the same thing that the Bush Administration is trying to do – mystify the conflict, to depoliticize it so that there's no solution – the problem is them. [Applause.] And if the problem is them, then of course to put it in very harsh terms then of course the only solution is the Final Solution. [Emphasis added.] The sight of Jews and Israelis accusing Israel Jews of Nazi-like intentions and attitudes toward the Palestinians lends credence to Sabeel's assertion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is largely the result of Jewish sovereignty and intransigence – not repeated Arab attempts to deny the Jewish people a sovereign homeland of their own. A New Dynamic? The willingness of Jewish activists to participate in Sabeel conferences conveys the message that if Jews are not bothered by Sabeel's rhetoric or agenda, then non-Jews, Christians especially, should not be bothered by it either. There are signs, however, that some Jewish peace activists are starting to wonder about the organization's agenda and rhetoric. For example, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a long time critic of Israel who spoke at Old SouthChurch in Boston on October 28, 2008, after the church hosted a controversial Sabeel event in its building. During his presentation, Rabbi Waskow challenged Sabeel's support for the Palestinian right of return, which he explained would undermine Israel's existence as a Jewish State – which, in other venues, Rev. Dr. Ateek has refused to accept. Whether Sabeel understands it or not, that attacks the sense of Israelis and Jews elsewhere in the world of what it means to have a two-state solution altogether. As people have said, "What's the point of having two Palestinian states alongside each other? So, if there is to be a state which in fact has a special relationship to Jewish history and to the Jewish people and to an attempt to generate out of Jewish values what statehood means then it isn't going to be a state flooded with and whose majority ends up being people who don't share those values. Rabbi Waskow then challenged Sabeel's use of deicide imagery and called on Christians to do the same. Then there's another aspect of Sabeel's view of the world which I think is even more scary to many, many, many Jews and that is something I understand very well coming out of a Christian view of liberation theology. I have both taught and met with and so on leaders of Christian liberation theology in Latin America and when Latin American Christian liberation theologians and folks appeal to the history of what became Christianity under the thumb of the Roman empire and talk about the crucifixion of Jesus by the roman empire ... and from their view point of course the resurrection of the Christ as teaching of what it means to transcend imperial power, in the Latin American context it's clear that the empire you're talking about is America and it makes sense. I understand that to Sabeel to talk about the crucifixion of Jesus seems on the surface like that's the same thing, but when you are doing it in the context of a Jewish state, when you're doing it in the context of 2000 years of Jewish suffering from the Christian dogma of deicide that the Jews killed God and the violence that has been visited on the Jewish community by people upholding that theology, to hear that strikes a nerve that has 2000 years of pain behind it and that has to be heard. The pain has to be heard. And if Jews can't explain it to Sabeel because it will look like and maybe it is self-defensive for me even to say it, then I think that Christians have to try to say it that there needs to be in that situation there needs to be a different metaphor a different language a different way of drawing on Christian liberation theology. Waskow is not the only Jewish peace activist to challenge Sabeel. Claire E. Gorfinkel, issued an open letter to Sabeel on February 19, 2008 after the organization held a conference at All Saint's Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. In this letter, published on the website of the Shalom Center, (a group founded by Rabbi Waskow), Gorfinkel challenges the conference's one-sided criticism of Israel, its failure to provide historical context to Israel's actions and its use of marginal Jewish voices in its program. Gorfinkel wrote that while the conference was not all Israel bashing all the time she wrote that "it was all Israel-bashing 80% of the time" and that "the conference did its audience a disservice by failing to acknowledge that actions and in-actions by others (including the United States and the Palestinian leadership) have also contributed to the conflict." In reference to Sabeel's use of marginal Jewish voices in the program, Gorfinkel wrote: Finally, I want to say something to and about the Jewish voices in the program. I listened with care to Anna Balzer, Gabriel Piterberg and Marcy Winograd. I agreed with much of what they had to say, and I commend their courage in speaking difficult truths for which they experience great hostility from fellow Jews. But I question your purpose in featuring them. Neither Piterberg nor Winograd actively promotes nonviolence or a two-State solution, and more importantly, none of them represents a significant constituency. Were they there just so you could say you had Jews on your program? Let us imagine a conference called by ecumenical Christians to discuss "Divisive Issues Facing Us Today," – focusing on the ordination of Gays and Lesbians, and homosexuals' rights to marriage and basic civil liberties. If the only Episcopalians on the program were representatives of the break-away churches, one could still say, with justification, "We had Episcopalians on the program." But they would not have represented mainstream, predominant, much less progressive Episcopalians. Polling data consistently shows that approximately 85% of American Jews support a two-State resolution of the conflict. The upshot is this: While some Israeli and American Jews (such as Jeff Halper and Marc Ellis) are willing to portray Israel as having Nazi like characteristics before Sabeel audiences, there are other Jewish peace activists who are starting to raise questions about the organization's agenda and rhetoric. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Hezballah in Iraq Using Lebanon-stye Tactics in Basra Posted: 29 Mar 2008 11:53 PM CDT When you read the News reports about the Iraqi Army's battles in Basra they sound reminiscent of Israel's battles in the Second Lebanon War. It seems that the terrorists are using the same tactics as those in Lebanon. That should be no surprise. It has reported that as the British cut and ran out of Basra, Hizballah moved in--and now the Iraqi Army is trying to get them out--and the British are back in. Hizballah has joined the armed Shiite groups and criminal gangs battling for control of Basra and its oil resources. Ignored by the international media, the Iraqi Hizballah draws on its Lebanese command for orders, fighters, arms and cash. A tentacle of the Lebanese Shiite terror group has therefore quietly grabbed a piece of the insurgent action in Iraq under the aegis of Iran's Revolutionary Guards al Qods Brigades. Iraqi Shiites Copying From Their Hezbollah Cousins in Lebanon? By Andrew Cochran In reviewing the action this week between Iraqi forces and Shiite militia, it's instructive to compare press accounts of this conflict to reports from the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel conflict in Lebanon, as posted or discussed on this website. Some examples: "Hizballah has proven to be a far more effective fighting machine than Israel anticipated, and the Israelis find themselves in a difficult situation: Continued military operations in Lebanon risk escalation and further destabilization, while a quick withdrawal would hand Hizballah a significant victory." Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ("DGR"), July 18, 2006. "Nasrallah admitted that it took five months of preparation to plan this operation." Olivier Guitta, July 19. 2006. "A senior Iraqi military adviser has said the crackdown is taking longer than expected, partly because militia fighters have superior weapons." Washington Post, posted March 28. 2008. "It's likely that Israel will begin a major ground engagement within the next two weeks designed to obliterate Hizballah's infrastructure and neutralize as much of its military wing as possible." DGR, July 18, 2006. "A source in the police command in Basra said he expected British and U.S. ground units to join the fight in coming days. Shiite fighters gave similar predictions." Washington Post, March 28. 2008. There are still unknowns in the current situation. We don't yet know if Shiite militia possess the range of armaments, the training and discipline displayed by Hezbollah units in 2006, or the same degree of integration with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that Olivier Guitta and Bill Roggio reported here (see Olivier's July 19, 2006 post and Bill's July 21, 2006 posts, during the period when our efforts were combined on this website). But it shouldn't surprise us if we find that the Shiite militias have prepared for the same type of warfare engaged in by their Hezbollah cousins in 2006, using Iranian arms, IRGC advisers and trainers, and similar tactics. The obvious difference between Lebanon 2006 and Iraq 2008 is the direct action in Iraq by the U.S. military, who are now far more efficient in counterinsurgency and urban warfare than the Israelis were entering the 2006 conflict. Did the Shiite militia desire such a reaction? Is that why they shelled the Green Zone so early in the conflict with the Iraqi army, to draw the Americans in and inject more uncertainty over Iraq into the 2008 election cycle? Perhaps, perhaps not - perhaps it was a strategic miscalculation which will lead to the eventual defeat of the Shiite militias. But the Shiite militia leaders have already achieved one strategic goal: they showed Pentagon planners and American voters that the Iraqi army is nowhere ready to secure Iraq, much as Hezbollah exposed the weaknesses in Israeli armed forces. We can also expect that unless the American military completely wipes out the Shiite militia (an unlikely outcome given the tactics of the militia), the Shiites will take another page from Hezbollah leaders and claim victory, thus raising the morale of their followers and their reputation on "the Arab street." And that would mean another strategic victory for their Iranian backers. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com