KR: Iranian-backed militia groups take control of much of southern Iraq

[Rose Siding]

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

BASRA, Iraq - Southern Iraq, long touted as a peaceful region that's likely to be among the first areas returned to Iraqi control, is now dominated by Shiite Muslim warlords and militiamen who are laying the groundwork for an Islamic fundamentalist government, say senior British and Iraqi officials in the area.
...
American military officials in Baghdad often point to the relatively low number of attacks against British soldiers in southern Iraq as proof that much of the country is stable.

Last month, however, at least 200 people were killed in Basra, almost all of them by militia violence, according to an Iraqi Defense Ministry official there.

A week with British troops in Maysan and Basra provinces and three additional days of reporting in the city of Basra made it clear that Iraqis here are at the mercy of Shiite militia death squads and Iran-friendly clerics who have imposed an ever-stricter code of de facto Islamic law.

The city of Basra has largely come under the control of Shiite clerics, who have banned alcohol sales. A woman without a headscarf is a rare sight. Record shops have been replaced with stores selling Quranic recordings. It's difficult to purchase chess or backgammon sets; the games are frowned upon by hard-line clerics.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14677922.htm

[Erika]

1. It sounds like the Dobson/Falwell/Robertson plan for Utopia

"right" here.

It is so sad because women and children are those who most suffer under these theocratic plans.

The pain is intensified when so many of our women troops lost their lives to liberate these countries.

But, hey, Bush's corporate buds have never seen higher profits. He transfers our tax monies over there to his buds and floods our labor markets with illegals, to suppress our wages, and voila, "he's turned us unto a third world country" and destroyed our middle class.