{"id":30,"date":"2004-08-18T21:34:34","date_gmt":"2004-08-19T02:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/?p=30"},"modified":"2004-08-18T21:34:34","modified_gmt":"2004-08-19T02:34:34","slug":"on-the-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/2004\/08\/18\/on-the-brink\/","title":{"rendered":"On the brink?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or just another delay tactic?
\n
\nUnfortunately it doesn’t look like there are any archives, but USA Radio News reported today that the situation in Najaf is getting tense:<\/p>\n

\n
Killer Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to disarm his Mehdi terrorists and leave a holy shrine in Najaf, Iraq — but U.S. officials say we need to see action and not just words from al-Sadr who has lied in the past to give his forces time to re-arm. Sadr agreed to the disarming plan only after a truce with U.S. Marines who have encircled the Imam Ali Mosque.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The BBC, on the other hand, reports<\/a> that “Mr Sadr has shown himself a master of brinkmanship and bluff in the past” and his sincerity is unclear.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Bombing<\/a> by U.S. warplanes has been reported in Najaf as Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi issued a “final call” on Sadr to end the fighting. Also, a military offensive to root out insurgents in Sadr City started Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or just another delay tactic?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iraq-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p706FH-u","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}