Rice, US generals signal stepped-up bloodletting in Iraq

For nearly a month, US occupation troops and Iraqi puppet forces have carried out air strikes and ground assaults in this sprawling eastern suburb of Baghdad, which is home to over 2 million people. The stated objective of this offensive is to suppress militias operating outside of government control and destroy special groups, a term introduced by the Pentagon to describe militia units that it alleges have been trained and armed by Iran.

In reality, the offensive, like that launched against the southern port city of Basra on March 25, is aimed at suppressing the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and weakening his political and social movement in advance of provincial elections set for this coming October.

The immense fire power of the US military is being employed in a bid to destroy what is arguably the only Iraqi political movement that can claim a mass social basecentered among the most impoverished layers of the Shia working classbecause of its stated opposition to the US occupation as well as Washingtons plans to carve up Iraqs oil wealth between the major US-based energy conglomerates.

Rice used a press conference in Baghdads Green Zone Sunday as an opportunity to launch a personal attack against Muqtada al-Sadr, implying that the cleric was a coward. More than five years after the US invasion of Iraq, Rice herself, like all US officials, was forced to enter the country secretly and under heavy guard for fear of being targeted by Iraqi opponents of the US occupation.

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