Robot Pirate Ninja

Iraq, al-Sadr showdown tests loyalties – USATODAY.com

BAGHDAD — On the eve of the Iraqi government’s showdown last week with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, Ismail Shnawa’s commander ordered him not to fight.

“He told us not to shoot back even if we get shot at by the Mahdi Army,” said Shnawa, a soldier in Iraq’s paramilitary police force that is commanded by the Iraqi army.

The six-day showdown with al-Sadr and other Shiite militias was the toughest test for Iraqi government forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The week of violence exposed troubling signs that the country’s security forces have much work before they can take over for U.S. troops. Militias and their followers remain entrenched within the government forces, and units sympathetic to al-Sadr, such as Shnawa’s, refused to fight.

In the southern town of Basra, more than 400 Iraqi soldiers and officers handed their weapons to the enemy, Ministry of Interior spokesman Abdel Karim Khalaf said.

Curious how people don’t want to shoot their family and friends when ordered to do so by a puppet gov’t.  It’s one thing to hunt terrorists, it’s quite another to fight a pseudo-civil war.