Now how will the MSM spin this?
Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad’s Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.
In return, Sadr’s Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government’s agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of “medium and heavy weaponry.”
The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that’s home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. On Friday, 15 people were killed and 112 were injured in fighting, officials at the neighborhoods two major hospitals said.
It also would be a startling turnaround in fortunes for Maliki, who’d been widely criticized for picking a fight with Sadr’s forces, first in the southern port city of Basra and then in Sadr City.
Members of Maliki’s Dawa Party and the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq met with Sadr officials on Thursday and Friday to come up with a 14-point agreement to end the weeks of fighting, …
What prompted this turnaround? The residents of the city were sick and tired of the fighting:
A government supporter said the Sadrists were brought to the table by the anger of Sadr City residents. On Thursday, the Iraqi military ordered Sadr City residents to evacuate in apparent preparation for a major offensive push.
“It is not the government who pressured the Sadrists into entering this agreement,” said Ali al Adeeb, a leading member of the Dawa party. “It is the pressure from the people inside Sadr City and from their own people that will make them act more responsibly.”
That and this didn’t help I would imagine:
An aide to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr lashed out on Friday at Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for keeping silent over clashes that have killed hundreds in Baghdad.
“We are surprised by the silence in Najaf where the highest Shiite religious authority is based,” Sheikh Sattar Battat said, referring to Sistani.
“For 50 days Sadr City is being bombed … Children, women and old people are being killed by all kinds of US weapons, and Najaf remains silent,” he told the faithful at the weekly Friday prayers in Sadr City, Sadr’s stronghold.
Battat said the Sadr movement has not seen any “reaction or fatwa (religious decree) from Najaf” criticising the government assault on Shiite fighters in Sadr City.
“For us this means that Najaf accepts the massacre in Sadr City,” a sprawling slum district that has been the site of fierce clashes between US forces and Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia since late March.
Calling out the top cleric in Iraq probably didn’t set well with him I suppose.
The MSM and the left were hoping for another big disaster to lay at the feet of Bushitler. Foiled once again. When will they learn?
UPDATE
Bill Roggio updates with the main points of the agreement:
The major points of the agreement, based on press reports, are as follows:
• The Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army would observe a four-day cease-fire.
• At the end of the cease-fire, Iraqi forces would be allowed to enter Sadr City and conduct arrests if warrants have been issued, or if the Mahdi Army is in possession of medium or heavy weapons (RPGs, rockets, mortars).
• The Mahdi Army and the Sadrist bloc must recognize the Iraqi government has control over the security situation and has the authority to move security forces to impose the law.
• The Mahdi Army would end all attacks, including mortar and rockets strikes against the International Zone.
• The Mahdi Army must clear Sadr City of roadside bombs.
• The Mahdi Army must close all “illegal courthouses.”
• The Iraqi government would reopen the entrances to Sadr City.
• The Iraqi government would provide humanitarian aid to the residents of Sadr City.The Sadrist said the US military would not be allowed to operate inside Sadr City; however there is no confirmation of this from the Iraqi government or the US military. “The Iraqi forces, not the American forces, can come into Sadr City and search for weapons,” Baha al Araji, a Sadrist legislator said. “We don’t have big weapons, and we want this to stop.”
UPDATE
These people are just retarded:
Kathy at Comments From Left Field does a good job of pointing up the cheerleading Right’s glee about “thousands of dead and injured civilians, U.S. airstrikes on hospitals, and a flood of new refugees” and their claims that anyone who does actually care about such stuff must automatically be an America-hating wuss.
Yeah, we’re all jumping for joy at civilians being killed. They have us conservatives pegged I guess. No need to hide it anymore.
It’s not like we are actually happy that some criminal thugs who have been a stumbling block to a Democratic government in Iraq is being beaten or anything. Its all because we like seeing the innocent killed.
How old are these bloggers? 12?
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