Al Sadr Reappears, As Bush Condemns U.S. Troops To Continue His Iraq Mess

George W. Bush has an ugly habit of denying his worst mistakes, and then projecting those mistakes onto others.Al-Sadr Reappears, As Bush Condemns U.S. Troops To Continue His Iraq MessBy Cliff Montgomery – May 30th, 2007Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr came out of hiding Friday after a four-month hiatus to demand the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It’s a call sure to complicate U.S. efforts to crack down on escalating violence in the country.Hours later, the head of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in Basra was gunned down by a hail of bullets as U.K. and Iraq troops tried to detain him in the city, a move which can only further increase anger in the Shi’ite sections of southern Iraq.The U.S. military also acknowledged the deaths of eight American soldiers and one Marine, showing that May 2007 may end up as one of the deadliest months for American troops here in years.Many reports believe al-Sadr initially hid in Iran as the U.S.-led security crackdown on Baghdad began 15 weeks ago. In any case, it seems clear he had commanded his militia off the streets to avoid a direct confrontation with U.S. forces.Al-Sadr’s return to the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf may well be an effort by the 33-year-old cleric to re-establish control over his fragmenting militia, as well as to take advantage of a Shi’ite rival’s  illness. Some also predict that his continued absence from Iraq was costing him support among his followers.Al-Sadr traveled in a long motorcade from Najaf to its sister city of Kufa, and there delivered a now typical anti-American screed to 6,000 chanting followers at Kufa’s most important mosque.”No, no for Satan. No, no for America. No, no for the occupation. No, no for Israel,” the angry  cleric declared in a call-and-response chant with the crowd.”We demand the withdrawal of the occupation forces, or the creation of a timetable for such a withdrawal,” added al-Sadr, wiping beads of sweat from his brow with a white cloth as temperatures rose to a blistering 113 degrees.”I call upon the Iraqi government not to extend the occupation even for a single day, ” he said.Al-Sadr also criticized the Iraqi government for not providing services, and asked his followers not to aid Iraqi security forces.”To our Iraqi Sunni brothers, I say that the occupation sows dissension among us and that strength is unity and division is weakness,” said al-Sadr.”I’m ready to cooperate with them in all fields,” he added.In addition to trying to rein in his Mahdi Army, many surmise that al-Sadr may be attempting to  consolidate political power and further increase his ties with Iran. He may do this by “possibly trying to capitalize on the illness of Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim,” who not long ago was diagnosed with lung cancer and traveled to Iran for treatment, according to an Associated Press article.But almost at the very moment in which al-Sadr was delivering his speech in Kufa, George W. Bush proved he will not be reigned in by logic and signed a $95 billion bill to pay for two theaters of battle at once–thus continually employing the fallacy of treating two separate subjects, the fruitless nation-building in Iraq and the real war in Afghanistan, as if it is a single subject.”Rather than mandate arbitrary timetables for troop withdrawals or micromanage our military commanders, this legislation enables our servicemen and women to follow the judgment of commanders on the ground,” Bush lied in a statement.Message to Dubya: Recognizing your fruitless nation-building in Iraq–that is, that false war started and continued by you for no valid reason–for the fraud it is and responding to that proven fraud cannot be an “arbitrary” matter, precisely because it is the only logical response to proven facts. Demanding something for every proven, valid reason is not arbitrariness; doing something for no valid reason is arbitrariness…you know, like your invasion and occupation of Iraq.Oh, and postscript: The commanders on the ground aren’t the ones who lied to get us into Iraq, nor are they the ones whose lies keep us there. You are the commander-in-chief–“the decider”, by your own admission–so you can’t claim to be valiantly following the whims of our generals who are in truth simply following those arbitrary whims of yours, and doing so only because they are bound by law to do it.Mr. Bush clearly adores the psychological tactic of disassociation and projection, in which he first denies his worst mistakes and then projects those mistakes onto others. I’m sure it’s gotten him out of some tight spots when he was a cocaine-sniffer and a drunkard; but Iraq is not one of his “youthful indiscretions”, and Daddy can’t buy him out of this one.America, there’s too much on the line for this cheap drunkard’s tactic to work any longer.