In February, at some risk to his reputation among his base, al Sadr extended the Mahdi Army cease fire in the hopes of being able to be part of the political process that means so very much to Team BushCo. It looks like al Sadr was doing too good a job working that angle. Juan Cole:
People are asking me the significance of the fighting going on in Basra and elsewhere. My reading is that the US faced a dilemma in Iraq. It needed to have new provincial elections in an attempt to mollify the Sunni Arabs, especially in Sunni-majority provinces like Diyala, which has nevertheless been ruled by the Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. But if they have provincial elections, their chief ally, the Islamic Supreme Council, might well lose southern provinces to the Sadr Movement. In turn, the Sadrists are demanding a timetable for US withdrawal, whereas ISCI wants US troops to remain. So the setting of October, 2008, as the date for provincial elections provoked this crisis. I think Cheney probably told ISCI and Prime Minister al-Maliki that the way to fix this problem and forestall the Sadrists oming to power in Iraq, was to destroy the Mahdi Army, the Sadrists' paramilitary.
Mission expired yet again. Whenever I hear this sort of news I wonder what exactly Paul Wolfowitz meant when he said he wanted Iraqis to live under "something like a functioning Democracy" and if the people responsible for starting this war - and for running our country - are mostly evil or mostly stupid.
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