Moqtada to the security forces: Join us

The statement by Moqtada alSadr read out in a Baghdad square and published today (Tuesday April 8) makes what is essentially a two-part argument: First, our aim is a society in which Iraqis--including in the security forces--do not treat other Iraqis as their enemies. But given the scope and severity of the Maliki government's preparations, it appears likely that kind of fitna-inducing violence could well result from a mass march tomorrow. For that reason, it will be postponed.

After the opening general denunciation of the occupier and what he has done by way of killing and destruction, Moqtada alSadr continues: ...and they have spread fitna among us, and brought with them this project that they call "democracy", which they have made an arm to strike against the Iraqi people and to oppress and evict them, and to arrest them either themselves or by bands of their paid servants...But I am convinced that our genuine Iraqi army and police, [people] who have God and love of their country in their hearts, and treat the Iraqi people as their brothers, have not, and will not, raise their hand to kill or to arrest their sons and brothers--indeed, their fathers and mothers--and have not, and will not, stain their hands with the blood of their people, or torture them in the pits of the American prisons or elsewhere, as the occupiers have done to us, and before them the haddam (?) More