Iraqi Clerics Encourage Attacks On US, UK Forces

Sometimes you just have to step back and re-evaluate the situation. The clerics don't see coalition troops as liberators, but as occupying forces.

Two years after U.S. authorities ceremoniously declared Iraq to be sovereign again, top religious leaders say Iraqis remain under military occupation, have a right to fight foreign troops and still don't govern themselves.

Their statements, made at the conclusion of a peace conference in London on Tuesday, provided a stamp of approval from Iraq's most influential Sunni and Shiite Muslim clerics for their countrymen to step up attacks aimed at hastening the withdrawal of U.S., British and other troops.

Call the people our troops have been fighting whatever you want to. Call them insurgents, terrorists, revolutionaries it doesn't matter. From here on they might well be all the Iraqi people. When the clerics speak, the people follow. That's how theocracies or religiously influenced governments work. Got that wingers? If the church speaks, you listen.

What do you need Bush, a fire lit under your ass? The Iraqis have asked you to leave, the US presence is causing more harm than good and the clerics have declared it open season on American troops. Just what more does it take for you to get the hell out?