Not only is freedom on the march, it appears to be massing its forces for a final, all out assault on GiJoe headquarters.

COBRAAAA!

Students in the Shi’ite Muslim religious Iraqi city of Najaf said that police recently arrested and beat several of them for wearing jeans and having long hair.

Why does this remind me of news from the 60s?

“They arrested us because of our hair and because we were wearing jeans,” said student Mohammed Jasim, adding that the arrests took place two weeks ago in the city, the spiritual heart of Iraq’s newly dominant Shi’ite majority.

“They beat us in front of the people. Then they took us to their headquarters, beat us again, shaved our heads and tore our clothes.

“When we asked what we had done, they said that we had no honor,” he told Reuters this week.

This is the sort of biased, unbalanced news one would expect from the Liberal Agitators in the Associated press, so that’s why it’s important to find out what the Po-Pos had to say…

“We didn’t oppress any freedoms. We detained them for a while and after we knew that they were students, we released them after they pledged they wouldn’t do it again,” Colonel Najah Yasir told Reuters.

Yasir commands the Tho Alfakar Brigade, a unit whose name refers to Imam Ali, son-in-law of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, whose shrine is the centerpiece of Najaf.

Yasir said the brigade had received complaints from locals in the old part of Najaf that young men were gathering in the streets and acting “improperly.”

He declined to elaborate on their “improper acts.”

Freedom isn’t free you know. Sometimes you have to oppress people and lie about it in order to instill liberty. It’s strateregy.

…But it is not only in Shi’ite areas that religion plays an increasingly influential role in society.

In Falluja, a Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad that was until recently a stronghold of insurgents, there were efforts last year to instill a strict religious code similar to that enforced by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Wow, Tom Delay was right – Iraq really is like Texas after all.

Found Via Americablog. (NOTE – Americablog reports that this was an attack specfic to young women – I don’t see that reported in the story, but if anyone reads anything…)