Sadr is not quite ready to try for round three and give us the excuse to finish him off:
Sadr, a fierce nationalist who has long called for a U.S. withdrawal, stopped short of telling his fighters to rise up against the American troops, a move that would severely complicate an ongoing security offensive underway in the capital and other parts of Iraq. Instead, he ordered his followers to remain united and to "demonstrate" to "end the occupation."
"My brothers in the Mahdi Army, and my brothers in the security services: enough fighting and rivalry, because that is only a success for our, and your, enemy," Sadr said in a statement brimming with emotion and passages from the Koran. "Infighting between brothers is not right, nor is it right to follow the dirty American sedition, or to defend . . . the occupier."
We shall see if Sadr can rally enought Iraqi Shias to make another go at us. Or even to round up a decent protest march.
I am sure he can round up his Iranian-paid thugs and some number of followers, but I hope that we can demonstrate to most Shias that Sadr is a pathetic tool of the Persians, and that we have the breathing space to take him down. Kill him or arrest him.
I still think that Iran's last play for victory could be an astro-turf uprising of Iranians posing as Iraqis who try to get actual Iraqi Shias to rally to them.
Really, can't we call his behavior unpatriotic and well beyond what dissent includes?
