{"id":2121,"date":"2005-01-27T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-27T22:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=2121"},"modified":"2005-01-27T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-27T22:38:00","slug":"irony-as-policy-tragedy-as-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2005\/01\/27\/18\/38\/irony-as-policy-tragedy-as-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Irony As Policy, Tragedy As Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military … “I would definitely say it’s enemy territory,” said Col. Stephen R. Lanza, the commander of the Fifth Brigade Combat Team … responsible for patrolling a wide area of southern Baghdad with a population of 1.3 million people … With hundreds of Baghdad police officers killed in insurgent attacks and others spending much of their time hunkered down at police stations hidden behind high concrete blast walls and watchtowers, police investigations have virtually ceased … Hospital morgues are filled with unidentified bodies and body parts, many of them found floating in canals or decomposing on stretches of wasteland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>But there is a bright spot…<\/p>\n

One tentative success story for the Americans has been Sadr City, the Shiite slum district on the capital’s northeastern edge that is home to more than two million people. If election turnout is high anywhere in Baghdad, it is likely to be among the slum’s dwellers, mostly followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the fiery Shiite cleric who twice last year mounted uprisings against American troops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>So in the end, it looks like one of the stronger political blocs to emerge from the elections will be the fundamentalist, revolutionary al-Sadr militia. There is a certain ham-fisted pithiness in this ironic denouement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military … “I would definitely say it’s enemy territory,” said Col. Stephen R. Lanza, the commander of the Fifth Brigade...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t