Real World

Since we all know mistakes were made in the follow up to the invasion, at least the tide seems to be turning in the present. I have a bud who's part of the surge, and in Taji, right off Highway Tampa. He tells me it's drastically different now, than it was when he first got there. Let's hope so. If things improve like we all want, then our boys and girls can get home soon.



Relations Sour Between Shiites and Iraq Militia



Mahdi Army members operating checkpoints in Baghdad in January. Today, many Shiites regard the militia as a band of thugs.

The New York Times

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: October 12, 2007

BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 — In a number of Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protector against Sunni militants. Now they resent it as a band of street thugs without ideology.

The hardening Shiite feeling in Baghdad opens an opportunity for the American military, which has long struggled against the Mahdi Army, as American commanders rely increasingly on tribes and local leaders in their prosecution of the war.

..........

Shiites are “participating like they never have before,” said Maj. Mark Brady, of the Multi-National Division-Baghdad Reconciliation and Engagement Cell, which works with tribes.

“Something has got to be not right if they are going to risk calling a tips hot line or approaching a J.S.S.,” he said, referring to the Joint Security Stations, the American neighborhood mini-bases set up after the troop increase this year.

.........


Like many Shiites, Abbas, the car parts dealer, attributes part of the drop-off to a new precision in American arrests, fed by tips from Shiite residents. Abbas said he and his friends had a name for the Americans, the Janet Brothers, a tongue-in-cheek term of tribal respect that plays off an American name. Another name, Madonna Brothers, refers to the American pop star.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/wo...mzMJwAb9PA4PZw

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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Leo Tolstoy, 1897