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Length: 4:31
KITTY PILGRIM: Well, a deadly cycle of violence
continues in Iraq today. Violent rampages in reaction
to yesterday's slaughter of over 200 Shiites in the
Sadr City section of Baghdad.
Michael Ware reports from the Iraqi capital tonight.
And Michael, the Iraqi government and the U.S.
military in Baghdad keep saying this is not a civil
war. What are you seeing?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let
me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a
civil war, when essentially you live in the most
heavily fortified place in the country within the
Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister,
the national security adviser for Iraq and, of
course, the top U.S. military commanders. However,
for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in
their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of
it, then they do not want to see what one really
looks like.
This is what we're talking about. We're talking about
Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and
Shia neighborhoods shelling back.
We're having Sunni communities dig fighting positions
to protect their streets. We're seeing Sunni
extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated
Shia marketplaces. We're seeing institutionalized
Shia death squads in legitimate police and national
police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to
Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging
them out, never to be seen again.
I mean, if this is not civil war -- where there is,
on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed
bodies showing up on the capital streets each
morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for
dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the
list of those who have simply disappeared for the
sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a
name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we
have people getting dual identity cards, where
parents cannot send their children to school because
they have to cross a sectarian line -- then, goodness
me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like
either if this isn't one.
PILGRIM: That is the starkest description I have yet
heard, Michael.
The political overlays are deteriorating rapidly. We
have Muqtada al-Sadr threatening to boycott the
meeting, boycott the government of al-Maliki if he
meets with President Bush.
What do you -- how do you assess the political
situation right now?
WARE: Well, you have to look at Muqtada's move here
politically as a very, very savvy twisting of the
knife. I mean, he lays claim to Prime Minister Maliki
just as much, if not more so, than the U.S. military.
Maliki has no popular base. He lacks the currency of
political power in this country, which is an armed
militia. So he's had to beg and borrow for political
capital.
He found it in the U.S. military, desperate to put
any kind of reasonable face on this apparition that
they call the Iraqi government. And meanwhile, in
real political terms, he's had to draw on Muqtada's
militia and its political faction to actually put him
into place.
So this is a man in a terrible predicament, who is
unable to deliver. And yet, we have Muqtada in this
time of crisis just turning that screw.
He has threatened to withdraw -- his people have
threatened to withdraw participation in the
parliament and the government if he meets with what
they call the criminal Bush. Nonetheless, he is so
acute, his political advisers and Muqtada himself.
This was a statement made by his leading
parliamentarian. It didn't come from his mouth
himself. So he can use this as very convenient
leverage this week in the leadup to the Maliki-Bush
meeting, and at the last minute, he can pull away
from it. And nonetheless, he still wins.
PILGRIM: That's desperately deteriorating in your
description, and it seems in reality, too.
Thanks very much. Michael Ware.
WARE: Thank you, Kitty.