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08/06/2004:

"Busted"

US troops surround Najaf home of Shiite militia leader
Mon Aug 2,11:49 AM ET Agence France Presse

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - US troops surrounded the home of wanted Shiite Muslim radical leader Moqtada Sadr in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

US armoured vehicles, backed by Iraqi security forces, cordoned off the Al-Zahra neighbourhood, where Sadr's home is located in the eastern part of the city.

Smoke was seen rising from the area Monday amid the sound of heavy gunfire, mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions.

This article was filed Monday, and today the mainstream press reports that Sadr broke the cease fire yesterday (Thursday). Sadr is insisting that this is a unilateral US attack, and the story about the police station bombing that Sadr forces carried out yesterday is a fiction. Up to now the US has been blaming all the recent bombings on alZirqawi, the live-dead, one-legged-two-legged, right-handed-left handed Jordanian. The question then arises as to why the US would deliberately provoke a Shi'ite uprising. Maybe they just thought they could catch Sadr by surprise with all the talk of cease-fire and amnesty, and wipe his forces out, as they had intended all along. Or maybe maximum chaos is their ultimate aim, so that at the end of all this they can tell the world that Iraq is incapable of self-government.