…
Nov. 2004
Fallujah assault not justified: Sadr
….
A spokesman for radical Iraqi Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has condemned the US-led assault on the city of Fallujah, appealing to Iraqi soldiers to abandon the Americans in the fight for the rebel bastion.

Last month, Sadr told Sunni leaders in Fallujah that he was prepared to help, whether they chose to fight or opted for dialogue to end their stand-off with the US-installed, interim government and US forces.

………

Even in the thick of the civil-war phase back in 2006/2007 the Sadrists still kept many bridges open with the Iraqi Sunnis – their objections were never to Sunnis as such let alone to Sunnis who blew up US hummers, but only to hardline Baathists with a bloody record of misdeeds against their own families/sect and to Zarqawi-type sectarianist fanatics – as this Jan 2007 post by Juan Cole makes clear:
…….
It is an abiding paradox of contemporary Iraq that the Mahdi Army and the Sunni Arab guerrillas are slaughtering each other daily, but that young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the leader of the Mahdi Army) has a better political relationship with Sunni Arab MPs and leaders than any other Shiite.

So many Sunni fundamentalist MPs and officials of the Iraqi Accord Front (some of them rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood) are acceptable to Muqtada. He would argue that the Mahdi Army is not killing Sunnis, only Saddamis and Nawasib.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-maximumsecurity-jail-to-open-at-guantanamo-bay-409881.html

In fact many resistance statements, including by Zarkawi listed Muqtada as one of their targets to attack in early 2004.

Muqtada railed at the mass killing of Iraqis in 2003 and early 2004. He and his followers argued that since the vast majority of the people the resistance killed were Iraqis, this proved that America was backing the resistance against the Iraqi people. [If you remember, not many American soldiers were killed in February, 2004, compared to many Iraqi security forces and many Iraqi civilians.]

This was the crux of the Sadrist anger at America in March, 2003. Bremmer threatened to shut down Muqtada's media outlets unless they stopped stating that America was behind the resistance, and responsible for resistance attacks against Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces. When Muqtada refused, his followers were arrested around March 30, 2004. Chalabi, Muqtada's close ally, was also targeted around the same time by Bremmer.

Parvati Roma, according to Muqtada, the Fallujan resistance were a bunch of CIA agents organized by America to mass murder Iraqis.

Many Muqtada supporters including Chalabi angrily railed at the Fallujan terrorists (or US backed Fallujan terrorists) in March, 2004.

Parvati Roma, do you remember how careful Muqtada was to appear against the Fallujan resistance in November 2004? This is because most of Muqtada's base hated the Fallujan resistance.

Sadrists neither formally endorsed or formally opposed the Iraqi Army and Marine assault on Falluja in November, 2004. On the other They continued to assert that America was backing the resistance and was behind the attacks on the Iraqi Army, Iraqi police, and Iraqi civilians.

Parvati Roma, in public at least, Muqtada railed against attacks against the Iraqi government, Iraqi Army and Iraqi police by the resistance except for a few limited exceptions (April, 2004, August, 2004, and March/April, 2008.)

When Muqtada seemed complicit in attacks against the popular Iraqi Army in March/April 2008; it politically devastated him.

I don't pretend to be an expert, and I agree with Juan I dislike the blanket term terrorist in general. But I recognize the implications if the media did use the term for a group like this within the u.s. it could spark another scare and effects on policy could be enormous. Just think about the opening of a new front in the "War on Terror". This is all hypothetical of course. I'll say no more on this frightful topic.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/is_america_yearning_for_fascism_20100329/