#5 "We are ready to begin again. But when I called my superiors, we were told to stay quiet for the time being," Amar al-Saadi told the Star yesterday. "If they tell us to fight, we fight. We do not like this interim government. If we are given the word, al-Mahdi is capable of bringing 250,000 fighters against them. We can eliminate this government in three days. That is all we need. But our leaders must decide. ....Abdel Rahman al-Shouwely, a spokesman for al-Madhi Army headquarters in the sprawling suburb of Sadr City, attributed the weekend threats to "a fake Mahdi message." "None of it is true. We want quiet with the Americans. We don't want to give them an excuse to cut away the moves toward sovereignty."... "Think of us as you would think of John Kerry in America. We are the opposition. In Iraq, there is room for an opposition now."
Big talk for a group almost shot out of existence the last time they tried to fight. The question is whether or not Alawi decides their blather constitutes a reason to stomp them out of existence. A different question is whether or not this is what Kerry meant by saying foreign leaders preferred him to Bush. |