Word: iraqi
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...Commander in Chief, his deference is waning on the Iraq war. "The reason I'm into this situation so deeply is that I feel that the American citizens have given so generously with their sons and daughters," he says. "Have we not fulfilled our commitment to the Iraqi people?" Warner's spacious office is filled with props: an arm from Saddam Hussein's chair, World War I medals awarded to Warner's father, a copy of the resolution Warner wrote authorizing the first Gulf War. History is never far from Warner's mind. "The decisions I'm making on this...
...According to Iraqi soldiers involved in the battle and its aftermath, the group's leader, Ahmad al-Hassaani al-Yamani, planned to lead his followers into Najaf and kill the Shi'a religious leaders there. Chief among the targets would have been Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the most revered Shi'a cleric in Iraq. His rivals slain, al-Yamani planned to lead his followers into the Imam Ali shrine, the resting place of Mohammad's son-in-law and one of Shi'a Islam's holiest sites...
...Instead, word of their presence and their plan leaked out and found its way to the Iraqi government, which launched a raid on Sunday that aimed to wipe the group out before it could leave its base. But the fighters of Yamani's Army of Heaven proved better prepared and more tenacious than the Iraqi military had anticipated. The area's orchards are separated from one another by high dirt berms. The Army of Heaven, armed with heavy machine guns, had turned the berms into formidable defensive positions. An Iraqi soldier who participated in the battle said the carnage...
...American air power was called in and eventually that helped break the Army of Heaven's resistance. But a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two American soldiers. Yamani died along with an unknown number of his fighters; many others were captured. Iraqi officials have offered varying descriptions of the fighters. They were first portrayed as al-Qaeda terrorists. Officials then acknowledged the Shi'a millenarian nature of the Army of Heaven, but still claimed the group was supported by Sunni terrorists and included foreign Arabs of the kind who flock to Iraq to fight under the banner of Sunni...
...Iraqi colonel told Time that the captured men all seemed to be Shi'a and came from heavily Shi'a areas such as Hilla, Karbala and Diwaniya. Given the chasm between the two groups' religious and political goals, an alliance between al-Qaeda and the Army of Heaven seems far-fetched. It is more likely an attempt to divert attention from unsettling realities. Chief among those realities is the Iraqi Army's inability to defeat a band of cultists without hours of air support from the U.S. military. This speaks to the limits of the Iraqi Army's competence...