Juan Cole/Informed Comment: April 10, 2005 Part 1

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Up to 300,000 Demonstrate in Baghdad


Edmund Sanders reports that the crowds in downtown Baghdad protesting the US troop presence in the country may have been as large as 300,000. If it were even half that, these would be the largest popular demonstrations in Iraq since 1958! To any extent that they show popular sentiment shifting in Shiite areas to Muqtada al-Sadr's position on the American presence, they would indicate that he is winning politically even though the US defeated his militia militarily.