Even before Bush left Baghdad, thousands of supporters of the Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had taken took to the streets in protest -- an incredible feat of organizing when you consider even Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki didnt know about Bushs trip until five minutes before his arrival.
As an Iraqi, Im so disappointed! bellowed Sa'dik al-Hasnawi, head of the Sadr Movement office in Diwaniya. Bushs visit shows Iraq is the 51st state. It doesnt make any sense that the President of one country comes to visit another country with sovereignty and is own right to self-determination without the President and the Prime Minister having any information about it. The Iraqi government wont do anything without permission from America. So we have a country without a government.
Meanwhile, citizens of Baghdad have begun life under an ongoing dusk-'till dawn curfew and new American military manoeuvre called "Operation Forward Together."
There is a lot of military, computer programmer Alaa al-Obeidi said from his home in Baghdad. Tanks, a lot of soldiers, but its just a huge show of force. They are showing off. Theyre just going around.
They have a lot checkpoints, but they are not doing any real checking, he added. Theyre just harassing people and delaying us. Thats it.
Baghdad killing two people and wounding seven. In the Sunni neighborhood of Adamiya, Reuters reports, gun-men blocked roads with stones and tree trunks and exchanged fire with Iraqi police.
Mothana al-Dhari is spokesman for Iraq's Sunni clerical establishment, the Association of Muslim Scholars exaplined:
Now the government is announcing publically that there is no legitimate resistance, he said. We expect to hear this from the government, because they are saying they are a legitimate government. So they want to make anybody against them illegitimate. The first people they want to make illegitimate is the armed resistance. But the armed resistance is against the American occupation.
Al-Dhari says the fighting will continue. He says under international law, any people under foreign occupation have the right to take up arms.
So, despite Bushs broad pronouncements, the fighting will continue.
Pacifica radio network reporter Aaron Glantz is author of the new book "How America Lost Iraq" (Tarcher/Penguin). More information at www.aaronglantz.com
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