The radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr issued a scathing attack on the United States on Friday, following one of the country's bloodiest days, blaming Washington for Iraq's troubles and calling for a mass demonstration April 9 — the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
As al-Sadr's remarks were read in a mosque, Shiites in Baghdad loaded wooden coffins into vans and shoveled broken glass and other debris into wheelbarrows in the aftermath of a double suicide bombing at a marketplace. At least 181 people were killed or found dead Thursday as Sunni insurgents apparently stepped up their campaign of bombings to derail the seven-week-old security sweep in Baghdad.
This is the risk of making us responsible for every blast. We need to pull in the non-death squad Shia militias and put part of the responsibility on them, as local defense forces, for securing Shia neighborhoods.
Despite initial success in reducing violence, I remain very troubled by this metric in judging the success of the surge.
