Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Well, many of us worried about seeing this actual day coming, but it’s looking like Al Sadr has been almost entirely de-nutted..

Baghdad, Mar 21, (VOI)- Parliamentarians from the Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) on Friday denied planning to liquidate and slaughter Sadrists, asserting that measures taken by the security apparatuses are not being directed against anyone not attacking government and U.S. forces.

Sheikh Jalal el-Din al-Sagheer from the SIIC denied any plans to liquidate Sadrists, saying “I completely deny these reports.”

“We have no interest in attacking anyone and these blocs have a great effect on the Iraqi society,” Sheikh al-Sagheer told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI) by phone.

“There is a difference between accusations and measures taken by the government against outlaws,” he added.
“There are two kinds of Sadrists; one of them wants to cooperate to achieve justice and we will work with this kind to boost security authorities,” the SIIC MP added.

“The other kind wants to cause problems, because they can not live in a peaceful atmosphere,” he said.
For her part, Nada al-Sudani, legislator from Dawa party, told VOI over the phone, “security measures taken in the provinces are not directed against any body.”

Ahmed al-Massoudi, a legislator from the Sadrist bloc, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, had accused earlier the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) of planning a military campaign to liquidate the Sadrists in Babel province.

“Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim’s “SIIC and the Dawa Party have held meetings with officers of the militias merged recently into security agencies to launch a military campaign outwardly to impose order and law but the real objective is to liquidate the Sadrist bloc,” he added.

“Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is directly supervising this scheme with officers from the Dawa Party and the SIIC,” he noted.

Massoudi warned that the Sadrists would be targeted in Babel just like they were targeted in the provinces of Diwaniya, Kut and Karbala.

The Sadrists in the Iraqi parliament have 30 seats, in addition to two deputies representing the bloc’s Risalyoun list, out of a total 275 seats.

The Sadrists entered parliament within the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC) during the legislative elections held by the end of 2005. They, however, withdrew from the UIC in mid-September 2007 due to what they described as “the insistence of some parties inside the bloc to marginalize the Sadrists.”