Al-Sadr Calls for Attacks on U.S. Troops

RedOrbit reported The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on American troops rather than Iraqis, according to a statement issued Sunday.

If he really wants the US troops out, he should be urging his people to work with the Americans as well as the Iraqi army and police, to stamp violence, because then we will leave. Attacking our forces will just get his forces killed.

The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday - a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

But his forces should not that al-Sadr himself was too chicken to show up. He wants them to do something he himself is not willing to do.

"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.