Word: shied
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...turning point in an already foundering war. An ecstatic mob in the center of a major Iraqi town had torn Americans limb from limb in front of rolling cameras. A series of catastrophic recriminations followed. Muqtada al-Sadr, emboldened by the attack, called for the first Shi'ite uprising against the occupation. U.S. Marines retook Fallujah but flattened parts of the city in the process and set the stage for future cycles of invasion and uprising that have scarred the city--and the country--ever since...
...holy city of Qum, south of the capital, Ahmadinejad has offended the grand ayatullahs, who act as the country's spiritual leaders. Most irritating have been his frequent allusions to his connection to the Hidden Imam, the last in a line of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, who Shi'ites believe will return at the end of the world to bring absolute justice to mankind. "Not only does he not talk about the sort of things a President is supposed to talk about," says Atrianfar, "but he talks about religious beliefs, a subject for which he is wholly unfit. This...
...humanitarian and development purposes, and bans Iranian exports of conventional arms. U.S. officials hope to use this provision to add the force of international law to its efforts to prevent Iran from smuggling arms to its allies elsewhere, particularly in Iraq, where the U.S. charges Tehran has been arming Shi'ite militias...
...hard to know if they will last. The massive, U.S.-led security operation in Baghdad has brought some relief. The daily death toll, which had risen to 100 last fall, has dropped. Sunni terrorists continue to kill innocent civilians with car bombs and suicide attacks, but at least the Shi'ite militias have melted away. U.S. military commanders see this as a victory, but few Iraqis are so sanguine. They know that the American soldiers will leave, and worry that the militias are simply waiting them out, regrouping and rearming in the shadows...
...Petraeus, on the other hand, seemed to be addressing Iraqis and Arabs. Many of Iraq's top leaders have repeatedly said that they view the militias as being a kind of neighborhood watch - with some bad apples who do terrible things. The evidence that some Shi'ite fighters engage in systematic kidnapping, torture and execution of Sunnis suggests that's wishful thinking, but that's what they claim. Petraeus knows this and has to calibrate what he says accordingly...