If the Americans leave, which we don't think they will, we'll make it a burial site for our parents

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/17/AR2010081702704.html

In Iraq, cemetery is symbol of militia's vow to fight if U.S. forces delay exit

By Leila Fadel
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

NAJAF, IRAQ -- The followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr call this plot of land on the edge of this holy Shiite city the Freedom Cemetery.

It is barren, nondescript desert ground, a two-acre section within the Sadrist Martyrs' cemetery. The graves have not been excavated. But it is reserved for a purpose: the possibility that U.S. forces might stay beyond the Dec. 31, 2011, departure deadline mandated by a security agreement between the United States and Iraq.

If that happens, members of the Mahdi Army, a militant Shiite group that bills itself as a resistance force against the U.S. occupation, have promised to rise up and fight to the death. Their bodies would be buried in the cemetery.

"If the Americans leave, which we don't think they will, we'll make it a burial site for our parents," said Abu Mohammed, who oversees the Sadrist cemetery, where 4,250 fighters and Sadr supporters are buried. "If their exit is delayed, we will fight and give our blood.

[madrchsod]

1. iraq is descending into civil war that is going to be hell on earth....

[gratuitous]

2. They sound so cynical!

Why don't they believe the United States? They must be some o' them terrist Iraqis, not the good kind of Iraqis we're there to liberate. And they got some nerve, callin' it the "Freedom Cemetery"! That's our word! We use that word!