Word: hussein
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...combustible. And so it proved last week in the mean streets of Sadr City, a neighborhood filled with poor, disgruntled Shi'ites, when the young rabble-rousing cleric decided to roll the dice. Since the day a year ago when U.S. soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein, symbolizing the regime's fall, al-Sadr has railed against the American occupation. He built up a network of civilian supporters and recruited fighters for his Mahdi Army, named for the 12th, or Hidden, Imam, whom Shi'ites believe will return as their Messiah. Al-Sadr delivered fiery anti-American sermons...
...Bush Administration has long suspected Iran of trying to stir up opposition to U.S. forces in Iraq. Since the beginning of the occupation, the U.S. has monitored the moves of Iran's most powerful Shi'ite clerics, who supported the ouster of one longtime enemy, Saddam Hussein, but now bristle at the presence of another one, the U.S., on their doorstep. Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Iraqi cleric who launched the Shi'ite revolt, has ties to some conservative Iranian clerics. Current and former U.S. officials say Iran has also funneled money and weapons to other Shi'ite militias...
...take some time. What unfolded in Fallujah last week is exactly the kind of war the U.S. managed to avoid in toppling Saddam Hussein. While America's strategy worked well at the time--U.S. troops bypassed Iraqi cities on their way to Baghdad and didn't even pass through Sunni-dominated Fallujah--it has allowed the insurgency to fester. The Marines came to the Euphrates River town last month hoping to show a kinder face to residents than they had experienced at the hands of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. But after the slaughter of four American contractors...
Rice replied that she had been "blown away" by a "brilliant" speech Kerrey had given in which he suggested the best way to avenge the Cole was to "do something about the threat of Saddam Hussein. That's a strategic view. And we took the strategic view. We didn't take a tactical view." Earlier, Rice had described her problems with Richard Clarke's first al-Qaeda action memo: it was too tactical; it didn't consider the larger picture, the strategic impact on the volatile situation in Pakistan of any U.S. actions against the terrorist bases in Afghanistan. Indeed...
...Middle East peace process were outdated as well (the protection of Israel was another basic neoconservative assumption). The response to Islamic radicalism would be strategic, as Rice said, not tactical: the Middle East would be rebuilt according to American principles, and Iraq was the key. If Saddam Hussein could be replaced by a democracy (or perhaps just a pro-American government headed by every neocon's favorite Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi), then there would be a "benign domino effect." Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, ultimately, the Palestinians would be intimidated into moderation. Terrorism--which was, after all, just a tactic...