Once again, the Bush White House shows that it has its finger firmly on the pulse of the Iraqi people.
From the press gaggle yesterday with National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe:
QUESTION: Have you got any reaction to Muqtada al Sadr’s urging his followers to rise up against the U.S. forces in Iraq?
MR. JOHNDROE: You know, the reports I’ve seen are that Sadr has urged his various militias, who are, again I remind everyone, operating outside the rule of law in Iraq, to not fight Iraqi security forces. And I think this sort of comment is not surprising, given these Iraqi security forces are having some success against the Jaish al Mahdi militias. And so we, the United States, and you heard Prime Minister Maliki say, everyone operating outside the rule of law need to — will be dealt with.
And I note today that Sadr called for massive protests. I’m not sure that we’ve seen that, those numbers materialize and the numbers that he was seeking in his call from his hangout in Iran. But Iraq, four years on, is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions. And that was something they could not do under Saddam. And while we have much more progress ahead of us — the United States, the coalition and Iraqis have much more to do — this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
From today’s New York Times:
Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, took to the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Monday in an extraordinarily disciplined rally to demand an end to the American military presence in Iraq, burning American flags and chanting âDeath to America!â
