Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Ethnic Cleansing
Looks like the Shiite plan to leverage the U.S. military on their side of the civil war is in full swing:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi troops battled Sunni insurgents in high-rise buildings on central Baghdad's Haifa Street yesterday, as Apache attack helicopters chattered overhead. Iraq said 30 militants were killed and 27 captured.
I doubt there were any Sunni's in the Iraq army that participated in the attack. In fact, the Iraqi army barely made it to the whole event:
In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias [yeah, right] who have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high rises. But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.
Yep, we're just there to support to eyeraqi people in their pursuit of freedom. Indeed.

Here's how the resident's saw it:
"What kind of security plan is this?" asked one terrified resident, who spent the morning in his home nearby. "They are destroying us, pounding an area less than one square kilometer with mortars, shells from helicopters and their tanks."

Residents accused the United States of unwittingly aiding Shiite Muslim militiamen accused of trying to force the mostly Sunni Muslim inhabitants from their homes, as part of a pattern of sectarian "cleansing" that is redrawing the map of the once largely integrated capital.
That's exactly what they are doing. I guess the good news, if you can call it that, is that the U.S. is no longer "in the middle".

It was reported that Bush would side with the Shiites and it appears he has. I think the next move is now up to the largely Sunni states surrounding the area.

Update: More from the NYTimes on those swell Iraqi troops in the Haifa Street fight:
As the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own. When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns.

.... Many of the Iraqi units that showed up late never seemed to take the task seriously, searching haphazardly, breaking dishes and rifling through personal CD collections in the apartments. Eventually the Americans realized that the Iraqis were searching no more than half of the apartments; at one point the Iraqis completely disappeared, leaving the American unit working with them flabbergasted.

"Where did they go?" yelled Sgt. Jeri A. Gillett. Another soldier suggested, "I say we just let them go and we do this ourselves."
Oy.
Written at 9:10 AM by Greyhair.
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