A blogger from Iraq reports on the Rashomon-like stew of different conflicting stories from this weekend's incident in Najaf. The "insurgents" are variously Baathists, Salafists, and splinter Shites. All these stories are rather wild, to put things mildly, and contradict each other aggressively on numerous easy-to-determine factual points, and come from sources with axes to grind.
However, he emphasizes one internet rumour. While not yet sourced, the rumour is by far the most plausible. In a nutshell, SCIRI (the main Iranian-affiliated faction) attacked a group of pilgrims, from a tribe politically opposed to SCIRI, at a checkpoint. The pilgrims fought back and SCIRI called in American airstrikes. A cult leader was indeed there but he was just going to Najaf for the annual mourning of Iman Hussein's death.
If true, we have reached the (predicatable) denoument of Bush's Iraq misadventure. Our troops are being used to kill Iraqi civilians whose only "crime" is political oppposition to the Iranian-affiliated government Bush is propping up. There's nothing for us to do and it's time to go home.
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