G.I. and Cleric Vie for Hearts and Minds in Baghdad

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"While policy makers and analysts in Washington discuss curbing the spread of militant Islam in the abstract, a political struggle between the American military and hard-line Iraqi religious leaders is steadily intensifying in Iraq," reports David Rohde. U.S. Lt. Col. David Haight recently arrested Sheik Jassim al-Saadi, a young Islamic cleric accused of incitement against the U.S. military presence in Iraq. "Across the country, young American military officers are competing with young, politically savvy Shiite and Sunni clerics for popular support," Rohde writes. "Military officials and residents say some clerics spread false rumors that American soldiers distribute candy wrapped in pornographic pictures, kidnap Iraqi women and girls for prostitution and can see through women's clothing with their night-vision goggles."