Word: clerics
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Distinguishing Iraqis from Iranians can be hard. Iraq's most revered cleric, Grand Ayatullah Husaini Sistani, speaks Arabic with a thick Persian accent. (Sistan-Baluchestan is the name of a province in southeastern Iran.) Meanwhile, across the border, Iran's top judge, Ayatullah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, struggles with Persian, the residue of an Iraqi birth. Theological cross-pollination and political exile have created deep ties between the two Shi'ite communities--and that's exactly what the U.S. is afraid of. In his speech last week announcing plans to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, President Bush...
...gallows as it is for the gruesome climax. As the noose was tied around Saddam’s neck, the Iraqi judge and prosecutor, present to ensure order, lost control. The guards began chanting “Moktada,” referring to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric responsible for inciting much of Iraq’s sectarian violence. The guards then proceeded to dance around Saddam’s dead body and gleefully yell “to hell,” dispelling any notion of an “Iraq for all Iraqis” grounded...
...images from a cell phone, we now know that the Iraqi National Police unit we turned Saddam over to was in fact a Shi'a lynch mob. Saddam's hangmen made no effort to hide their allegiance, taunting the deposed Iraqi leader with the name of radical Shi'ite cleric and power broker Muqtada al-Sadr. Afterwards, they danced around Saddam's corpse...
...where U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army clashed openly in 2004 in battles many on both sides see as unfinished. Peterson says the Mahdi Army, as an organization, has grown more sophisticated politically and tactically over the years, morphing from a band of thugs led by a reckless young cleric into something much scarier...
...long-suffering Shi'ite majority, clearly calculated to boost the political standing of those who administered it. And so, as the video makes clear, Saddam faced death to the sound of chants proclaiming Shi'ite victory and extolling the name of the anti-American radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr - not exactly the healing denouement the U.S. had in mind for the Saddam...