Dahr Jamail has a new post up at Iraq Dispatches. Here's an excerpt:
Yesterday Hassan Nuaimi, high ranking member of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) was found dead in Baghdad. One of his arms was broken and a hole was drilled into the side of his head.
This coming the day after the AMS had accused the Shia led governmnet of state sponsored terrorism by using the Badr Brigades to murder Sunnis.
In response to the murdering of Nuaimi, two Shia clerics were gunned down in Baghdad yesterday.
Harith al-Dhari, head of the AMS, blamed the Shia Badr Brigades for the recent spate of killings of Sunni clerics in the country.
Dhari, making a statement that could be interpreted as an announcement of civil war, said Sunnis would not keep silent over the killings.
"We are heading towards a catastrophe, only God knows when it will end, this is a warning from us," he said angrily.
The Badr Brigades were in exile in Iran during much of Saddam's rule, and returned to Iraq after the invasion and have been a fully operational militia in Iraq ever since. I have seen their members in full uniform and with heavy weapons in Baghdad during a Shia demonstration last summer. The Badr Brigades was headed for years by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance who won the largest percentage of votes in the January 30 "election."
There has been a low-grade civil war going on for quite some time-but now the veil has been ripped off by the statements made by Dhari.
For those wondering where the posts are tonight, we're working on one on Okrent. We're includes Dallas and Shirley who are hunting down links to statements quoted in some e-mails.
The post is being worked on and if we can't find a link to a quote after X-number of attempts, we'll have to leave those comments that were intended to be public out.
The Okrent post will go up tonight.
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