Rumsfeld: What we've gained in Iraq

[mburbank]

The bloody raid conducted Sunday in north Baghdad against Shiites assembled in a mosque in the country's capital continues to elicit reactions. Shiite leaders, who suggest there were around twenty deaths, denounce an American bungle. The Unified Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition in power, describes that operation as a "massacre" and demands that the American government cede responsibility for the maintenance of order to the Iraqi government.

"American forces and Iraqi Special Forces committed an odious crime when they attacked the Al-Mustapha Mosque in the Ur neighborhood," the Shiite bloc asserts in a communiqué. "It's an organized crime with serious political and security implications. It aims to incite a civil war," the Shiites insist. "To kill such a great number of the faithful of the family of the Prophet after handcuffing and torturing them is indefensible. It's an attack on the dignity of Iraqis that strips away any credibility from the slogans of freedom, democracy and pluralism flaunted by the American administration," the communiqué concludes.



That's what the UIA is saying. They are currently the largest unified block in the democratically elected government.

I have no idea wether the report of the attack is even remotely correct, but the comunique is real. If Al Sistani gets on Al Jezira and says "Now, we don't know what's happened yet, lets everybody calm down" and then everybody does, that will be a measure of how much he can impact what we are able to do there. Unless of course it's true, in which case I'd say all bets are off.