Word: firebrands
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...under U.S. tutelage, with the UN confined to the role of humanitarian NGO and occasional consultant. But the realities on the ground forced repeated revisions to that plan. It became clear to the U.S. military that the violent insurgencies in the Sunni triangle and among the followers of Shiite firebrand Moqtada Sadr were too deeply rooted in their communities to be eradicated by military means. And the unyielding demand for elections by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, who insisted that neither Bremer's occupation authority or any Iraqi government it appointed could legitimately...
...Allawi this week specifically called on Sadr to disband his militia and instead compete in the realm of politics and stand for election next year. The same message, no doubt, will have been transmitted by Sistani, who met with Sadr last weekend, signaling the extent to which the upstart firebrand's stature has been enhanced, rather than diminished, by the confrontation with the U.S. in which he lost hundreds of men. The fact that Moqtada Sadr looks likely to be a factor in Iraqi politics long after Paul Bremer ceases to be one is a sharp indicator of the policy...
...anyone nostalgic for the vigor of a Howard Dean speech, AL GORE may seem an unlikely fill-in. But the once wooden former Veep is reinventing himself as a finger-jabbing political firebrand. In a speech at New York University, he lashed out at the war in Iraq, demanded the resignation of six key Administration officials and called Bush "the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon." With growls for emphasis...
...Baathists and the Sadrists competing at the ballot box than taking pot shots at it. And there's good reason to believe that can be achieved in the case of Sadr, at least, who has long embraced Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's demand for elections. The firebrand cleric has perfected the art of campaigning for Shiite popular support by attacking the Americans - the U.S. was late in recognizing that far from isolating him, American military action against Sadr was actually boosting his popularity. Current opinion surveys in Iraq find Sadr ranking second among Iraqi politicians in popular support with upward...
...using his confrontation with the Americans to challenge his political rivals in the Shiite community. Even as negotiations continue, his forces are clashing with U.S. troops at Karbala, Kufa and Baghdad. The U.S. objective may be to weaken the Mehdi militia and raise the pressure on Moqtada, but the firebrand cleric appears to be using that pressure to his own ends - particularly to challenge his more moderate rivals, chief among them Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sadr has long rejected what he sees as Sistani's quiescence toward the occupation, and he cleverly judged that Sistani's silence in recent days...