My view - Moqtada al-Sadr is a garden variety, very ambitious, power hungry politician. Perhaps smarter and craftier than most. He wears a religious fundamentalist cloak to secure the support of his political base, not unlike Republican Presidential candidates will deny evolution to secure the support of religious fundamentalist constituency. Or like Democrats will kow-tow to Unions and pro-life groups to secure the support of their constituencies. I actually consider this a hopeful characteristic. You can’t negotiate with a religious fanatic. A power hungry pol will deal with anyone to meet their political aims. If al-Sadr thinks that working with the Iranians or working with the US will get him what he wants, he’ll deal. Quoting from the full post:

“A realistic “End State” scenario is an “accommodated” (or if you prefer “co-opted” or “bought-out”) Moqtada al-Sadr, or someone just like him. A popular theocrat, elected into leadership in Iraq, still railing at the “Great Satan” from his bully pulpit to maintain his popular support, but behind the scenes working with the US at the precise intersection of US interest in a stable Iraq, and his lofty personal ambition for power on a world stage. This scenario would work for Iraq and would work for us.”

It would appear at face value that he is a guy who had responsibility thrust upon him when his Dad and 2 brothers were murdered in 1999 and is trying to do the best he can without helping to “blow up” the region from Baghdad to Tehran. The USA may not like this guy, what he stands for, or how he runs his mosque…….but he’s the power like it or not and we can either deal with him, martyr him, or deal with Iran when this thing falls apart completely. So if history always repeats itself where have I seen this before?

All Bush can hope for now, is for it not to happen on his watch, so the Democrats can be blamed.

The link on his name is to the Institute of Historical Review run by Mark Weber, a group that promotes Holocaust denial literature and authors. I’d encourage you not to click on that link, as that is part of the purpose of his comment. If you would like to read more about IHR or Weber, I’d suggest links here or here

Oscar’s comment has nothing to do with my post, but is a first volley in a conventional trolling effort by an anonymous anti-semitic racist. If there is any rational intent behind the comment, it is probably an attempt to stimulate a debate about the “Jews controlling America.” Well we are not going to do that in this thread. I considered (for the first time in my experience at Donklephant) just deleting that comment, which I have authority do for comments in threads to my posts, but decided to leave it there, in order to explain what Oscar is all about. But the attempted threadjack ends here, I’ll delete without comment anything else along these lines.

Buh-bye Oscar. Take it elsewhere.

MW Nice post. Oscar are you calling MW a Jew for writing this……as if that’s derogatory or something or did I mis-read that? Please don’t confuse Judaism with Israel - they are very different. Judaism doesn’t deserve your derision - Israel may, but I am in no position to tell you what to think about Israel - I have my own views there.

We are in the middle of a civil war and have been since the day Saddam’s statue was pulled down. All the facts indicate that this war of choice was engineered for no other reason than material and financial gain. The military is broken, our nation currently sits on debt in excess of 9 $Trilion. The victims are many…the Iraqi people, the American people, the US Army and Marine Corps, so many others. The only people to have been charged and convicted of crimes (and there are many) are a couple of low level grunts. We have a Federal election coming up and 2 of 3 leaders actually agreed with the execution of this crime. And the last thing anyone in power wants is for the nation to stay with this story, keep asking questions, and keep hammering.