Replies to post #60653 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Gulfbreeze]

You sound like you are happy about this...Quite sad...

[harrypothead]

Have we been here before?

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/9450178.htm

The Bush campaign is pelting John Kerry with dead cats because of his promise to wage a more "sensitive" war on terrorism -- Democrats tend to think in the vocabulary of the therapeutic society and its "caring professions." But the Bush administration is simultaneously struggling to balance the competing imperatives of economizing American lives and waging a war sensitive to the religious sensibilities at stake in the struggle for control of Najaf...

Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS": the most fearsome of the Nazis.

Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant.

[Rick Faurot]

The persecution of the Iraqi people continues:

U.S. Tanks Move Toward Najaf Shrine, Clashes Kill 40
Sun Aug 22, 2004 09:23 AM ET

By Michael Georgy
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. tanks rumbled to within 800 meters (yards) of a holy shrine in the Iraqi city of Najaf on Sunday as fierce clashes with Shi'ite rebels in a nearby town killed at least 40 Iraqis, officials said.

Talks to end a near three-week Shi'ite Muslim uprising led by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr appeared to have stalled after negotiators failed to agree on how to surrender control of the Imam Ali shrine, where Mehdi militias remain holed up.

In Najaf's old city, Mehdi militias fired mortars at U.S. positions and the sound of gunfire crackled from near the shrine. U.S. helicopter gunships clattered above the labyrinth of narrow streets not far from the gold-dome mosque.

Near Najaf, clashes between U.S. troops and militias on Saturday killed 40 people in the town of Kufa, a Shi'ite stronghold from where Sadr has led Friday prayers. Interior Ministry officials said the dead were militiamen and civilians.

Earlier on Sunday, a U.S. military AC-130 gunship unleashed rapid cannon and howitzer fire on rebels in Najaf.