{"id":196245,"date":"2008-05-13T23:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T04:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/13\/iraqis-fire-surface-to-air-missile-at-chopper-over-sadr-city-on-deadline-usatoday-com\/"},"modified":"2008-05-13T23:11:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-14T04:11:00","slug":"iraqis-fire-surface-to-air-missile-at-chopper-over-sadr-city-on-deadline-usatoday-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/13\/iraqis-fire-surface-to-air-missile-at-chopper-over-sadr-city-on-deadline-usatoday-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqis fire surface-to-air missile at chopper over Sadr City &#8211; On Deadline &#8211; USATODAY.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The cease fire in Sadr City <a href=\"http:\/\/ap.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD90KUVNG0\">appears to be holding for the moment<\/a> in Baghdad, though if I were a US military man, I would be rather concerned at the report that someone, probably a Mahdi Army member, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.usatoday.com\/ondeadline\/2008\/05\/iraqis-fire-sur.html\">fired a surface-to-air missile at at a helicopter before things settled down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This was likely not a lone combatant making this decision.  This was likely a conscious decision made as a warning to the US that the militias have resources that could mean that air operations over the Baghdad slum will no longer be quite so easy.<\/p>\n<p>For some context, I would suggest that <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/wonkroom\/2008\/05\/10\/silent-clerics\/\">this article from Think Progress<\/a> goes a long way towards explaining Muqtada al-Sadr&#8217;s popularity.  Money quote:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>One of the central elements of the elder Sadr\u2019s program (and now of Muqtada\u2019s) was a distinction between the \u201csilent clerics\u201d (represented by Sistani and the Najaf establishment) \u2014 bookish sorts who stay remote from the lives of their people \u2014 and the \u201cspeaking clerics\u201d who take part in the suffering and struggle of the Shia, as Sadeq did. And here the \u201csilent clerics\u201d once again stayed silent while Shia were crushed in Sadr City, of all places, while medical care, food, and shelter are being doled out in Muqtada\u2019s name. It doesn\u2019t require any math to see that Sadr benefits politically from this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cease fire in Sadr City appears to be holding for the moment in Baghdad, though if I were a US military man, I would be rather concerned at the report that someone, probably a Mahdi Army member, fired a surface-to-air missile at at a helicopter before things settled down. This was likely not a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[981,1063],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}