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Sadr Brands Bush Obstinate, "Leader of Evil"
Again Demands US Pullout, Says "Bush is Fanning the Flames of Sectarianism"
Baghdad, Apr 28, (VOI) - Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr said U.S. President George W. Bush destroyed Iraq and accused him of disregarding international calls to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
"Bush, the leader of evil, is obstinately ignoring calls to exit Iraq or even initiate a timetable for withdrawal as demanded by the Democrats," Sadr said in a message to Bush read out by Liqaa Al Yassin, a member of parliament loyal to Sadr.
The U.S. House of Representatives had approved on Thursday a bill linking a budget to finance U.S. troops in Iraq to the drawing up of a timetable for pullout, beginning next October.
Sadr discredited statements that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would cause chaos.
"What chaos will happen if the U.S. army withdrew from our lands. We are already in a chaotic Iraq where blood is shed every few moments and explosions and car bombs are never ending," Sadr said in his statement.
The young Shiite cleric added that the policies pursued by the U.S. administration in Iraq after the fall of the former regime in April 2003 were the main reason behind the chaos Iraq is going through at the moment.
"Bush claimed that he uprooted the dictatorship in Iraq while at the same time he is asking to bring Baathists back in our government," he said, stressing that "Bush is fanning the flames of sectarianism by building non-national and non-Islamic walls of political and sectarian division.
The U.S. forces had started construction works on a concrete wall around the area of al-Aazamiya in Baghdad allegedly, to protect the residents of the city from what has been called "terrorism."
"If Bush is claiming that his picture will be hung on walls inside Iraqi houses, then he is dead wrong because his pictures are now under Iraqis' shoes," said Sadr, adding "Bush has planted the seeds of violence, division and hatred all over the world and he will never be able to end this."
"Bush does not want peace because he is a warmonger," the Shiite leader said.
The Sadrists inside the Iraqi parliament have 30 seats within the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), the largest parliamentary bloc with 113 seats out of a total 275 seats.
Sadr has many supporters, mostly in Sadr City in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, and some southern Iraq cities. He has loyal militias called the Mahdi Army
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