WP: Crackdown on Muqtada al-Sadr Imminent



David Ignatius argues that the US still plans to crack down on Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement. He says the Pentagon feels that in the firefights between the Sadrist Army of the Mahdi and US troops recently in East Baghdad and Karbala, Muqtada "crossed a line." They recognize that moving against him will cause trouble with some proportion of the Shiite community. Gen. John Abizaid, US military commander in Iraq, is said to have apprehensions about the plan because it could upset the South, which has not been as big a security problem for the Coalition as the Sunni Arab triangle.





http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/

articles/A44854-2003Oct30.html