Jihadi Du Jour: Maliki feels Shiite fury over bomb slaughter

P.M. pelted and insulted...

THE motorcade of Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was pelted with stones by fellow Shiites in a Baghdad slum when he paid his respects to the families of some of the 202 people killed there last week in the deadliest attacks since the US-led invasion.

The anger in Sadr City, stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia, boiled over on Sunday on the third day of a curfew imposed on the capital by Mr Maliki's US-backed national unity coalition as it scrambled desperately to stop popular passions exploding into all-out civil war between Shiites and the Sunni minority.

"It's all your fault," one man shouted as a crowd began to surge around Mr Maliki. Men jeered as his armoured convoy edged through the throng, away from a mourning ceremony for one of the victims of Thursday's multiple car bomb attacks.

Reprisals against Sunni mosques and homes, and three days of sporadic mortar fire in city neighbourhoods, kept Baghdad's 7 million people at home, fearful of what might come when a traffic ban ended yesterday.

I guess you gotta blame someone. Apparently Bush and Maliki are cut from the same cloth. It seems both are getting the brunt of extremist's bad behavior.