So, I'm sure Scott McClellan will be blasting the NY Post for running pictures of Saddam Hussein which have outraged Shiites. Right? I mean, he'll demand an apology from the paper...right? Anything less would be ... dare I say it ... hypocritical. Right? I mean, since people's lives are being lost and all.
Thousands of Shiites, many waving Islam's holy book over their heads, protested the U.S. presence in Iraq on Friday after the detention of several supporters of a radical cleric, while Sunnis shut down places of worship elsewhere in a show of anger over alleged sectarian violence against the minority.
The U.S. military also launched what it said would be an aggressive investigation into how a British newspaper got pictures of an imprisoned Saddam Hussein clad only in his underwear, saying the photos violated military guidelines and possibly the Geneva convention on the humane treatment of prisoners.
The photos, which appeared on the front pages of the British tabloid Sun and the New York Post and were broadcast across the Middle East by some Arab satellite networks, were expected to fuel anti-American sentiment among supporters of the former dictator who are believed to be the driving force behind the country's insurgency.
The Shiite protests in the southern cities of Najaf, Kufa and Nasiriyah, came as Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced that he will visit Syria, which has been accused of harboring insurgents bent on starting a civil war in Iraq.
The protests, which drew an estimated total of 6,000 demonstrators in the three cities, followed radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's call Wednesday to reject the U.S. occupation of Iraq by painting Israeli and American flags on the ground outside mosques to be stepped on in protest raids against holy places.
In violence elsewhere, a suicide bombing targeting the house of Iraqi national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, killed two civilians and wounded three in the Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah, police said.
After the explosion, gunmen in the nearby Azamiyah area opened fire at a U.S. base in Kazimiyah on the western side of the Tigris River, witnesses said. The gunmen later fled, they added. Witnesses reported seeing U.S. Apache attack helicopters firing rockets into the neighborhood.
A U.S. soldier also was killed early Friday in a vehicle accident caused by roadside bomb attack near Taji, 10 miles north of Baghdad, the military said. At least 1,628 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Al-Sadr's call for protests was made a day after U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 13 of his supporters during a raid on a Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Iraqi troops confiscated weapons from the mosque.
Al-Sadr, a burly, black-bearded cleric, launched two uprisings against U.S. forces in Baghdad and Najaf in April and August last year, then went into hiding before surfacing on Monday to demand that U.S.-led forces withdraw from the country.
"From this platform, we warn the government not to fight the al-Sadr movement because all the tyrants of the world could not beat it," Hazim al-Araji, the imam of a mosque in Kufa during Friday;s sermon. "We say to the government do not be a tyrant like Saddam or (former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi."
In the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kufa, al-Sadr followers painted American and Israeli flags on most streets near mosques before stepping on them.
"Down, down Israel; down, down USA," chanted protesters following midday prayers at a Kufa mosque.
In Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, al-Sadr supporters clashed with guards at the headquarters of Dhi Qar provincial governor, Aziz Abed Alwan.
Personally, I think extremists who would protest over an inaccurate Newsweek article or photos in US and British papers are looking for an excuse to protest, so I don't see how any news agency should be held responsible for acts of terrorism or violence against Americans. From where I stand, claiming that a news report is responsible for violence against Americans takes the responsibility away from the terrorists. That type of rhetoric just feeds the terrorists' rationalizations, no? But since Scott McClellan decided to make such a big deal out of the Newsweek article, I would expect him to at least be consistent in his righteous indignation.
I would anxiously await McClellan's statement on this latest development...but I'm not holding my breath here.
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