Informant38

unable to open their eyes:

The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged the Iraqi army and police to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate on pushing American forces out of the country, according to a statement issued Sunday.
The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday
[...]
"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy," the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified.

In the statement, al-Sadr — who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government — also encouraged his followers to attack only American forces, not fellow Iraqis.

"God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them — not against the sons of Iraq," the statement said, in an apparent reference to clashes between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. "You have to protect and build Iraq."

The U.S. military on Sunday announced the deaths of four American soldiers, killed a day earlier in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. The province has seen a spike in attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces since the start of a plan two months ago to pacify the capital. Officials believe militants have streamed out of Baghdad to invigorate the insurgency in areas just outside the city.
Separately, a pickup truck loaded with artillery shells exploded Sunday near a hospital south of Baghdad, killing at least 15 people. The blast left a crater 10 yards wide, the Iraqi military said.
Three mortars sailed into houses in eastern Baghdad, sending six people to the hospital with breathing difficulties from a possible chemical agent, police said.
Doctors said the victims' faces turned yellow and they were unable to open their eyes.

Kadir/AP/Yahoo 08.04.07
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It feels silly today, trying to do this. Something says there's still a few souls trying to understand what it is, but everyone else is carrying cardboard boxes of food and water down into the shelters, hoping for the signal to come in time.
Anyway. This is propaganda, not news. As dull and vicious and insanely deceptive as anything that came out of the concrete fortresses of the 1950's, America or Russia or China. It's insane, but there it is, all black and white and read all over.

The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

That would be renegade from what exactly? Evil Islam that everyone supposedly knows is a religion of violence and intolerance? He's a renegade from that?
Or is he a renegade from the benevolent hand of freedom and democracy so patiently extended toward him by his peace-loving brothers and sisters in the Judeo-Christian West?
What exactly is he renegading about, or to, or against? Or is he one of those people we all know that just have to be contrary, no matter what?

al-Sadr — who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government

the renegade with an "enormous following" and "close allies" in...
The "lone wolf" with his fiercely loyal posse and thousands of disciples.
Also, this is fun - how the statement is quoted with total authority in the lede paragraph, then described as "stamped" with his "official seal", then qualified with

...the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified

then

"God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy..."

and

"You have to protect and build Iraq."

followed immediately by

The U.S. military on Sunday announced the deaths of four American soldiers, killed a day earlier in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala province

The visual equivalent would be footage of him yelling something in Arabic at the camera with a mincing translation voiceover and simple english scrolling underneath, followed right away by footage of wounded and dead American soldiers.
You hated Osama bin Laden so much because you were told to hate him so much, by voices on your television and radio, voices that lied to you repeatedly and consistently, whenever it suited their dark purpose; and you hated Saddam Hussein because those same invisible ever-present voices encouraged that hatred; and now you're supposed to hate al-Sadr. Because he's a renegade.
Because he thinks of the American military as "the enemy". The American military which invaded his country and has killed or been responsible for killing close to a million of his countrymen - images of dead and grotesquely maimed Iraqi children being so common on the internet now they're no longer all that stimulating to the death-porn freaks - a war that's destroyed the Iraqi economy, a war which the majority of Americans now believe was begun under false pretenses, that they were tricked into supporting because the evidence for it was based on lies and cunning manipulations of the truth, a war funded by blank checks on the American treasury issued by corrupt and lying politicians, to the outrageous benefit of corrupt and lying corporations.
Renegade from that.
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I'd like to thank Thomas Harris for providing us with the image, in Silence of The Lambs, of the politician's daughter down in the pit, with that little yapping dog running around up above her, just out of reach, and the stone psycho Buffalo Bill humming to himself and primping in the mirror - because it is exactly where we are right now.