Got Surge?

If I can use your balls for castanets, guess which one of us is charge?

This from McClatchy.

Al-Sadr reasserts authority over his movement

By Laith Hammoudi and Leila Fadel

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD - The anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is reasserting authority over his movement after disappearing from public view for three months.
A top Sadr aide, Salah al-Obaidi, said Monday that since Sadr had reappeared during religious services two weeks ago at a shrine in Kufa, he'd replaced 11 local leaders of his movement, including two in Baghdad.

Obaidi, who speaks to Sadr regularly and is considered his spokesman, also disavowed what appears to be a final push by Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, to seize control of contested neighborhoods in south and west Baghdad, where Shiite forces are pressing a campaign to push out Sunni Muslims. He said local leaders in the Bayaa and Amil neighborhoods had acted without orders from Sadr.

"Sayed Muqtada refuses all kinds of violence and he refuses to answer violence with violence," Obaidi said. "Sayed" is an honorific used for descendents of the Prophet Muhammad.

Where Sadr went during the months he dropped from sight is still debated. U.S. officials said that the young cleric - he's thought to be in his early 30s, though his precise age hasn't been publicized - had fled to Iran in February as the U.S. began building up troops to stanch sectarian violence in Baghdad. His supporters say he never left Iraq.

What isn't contested, however, is the impact of his absence. U.S. and Sadr officials say the movement fragmented while he was away.

"We have seen a fracturing of Jaysh al-Mahdi in the last few months. We see elements acting on their own," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Garver said, using the Arabic for Mahdi Army. "He may be trying to prevent that. It could be a positive thing for Iraq, the coalition and the Iraqi people or it could be a negative thing, depending on how these new leaders are going to behave."
…

On the one side, we are being targeting by the people we “liberated” and who who now clearly want us the fuck out of their country by any means necessary, and we operate hoping that their most powerful leader will somehow not keep kicking us in the throat.

On the other, we now arm and train the same people we overthrew and ousted four years ago, knowing that by night they reconstitute as death squads and kill each other and us.

Because they, too, want us the fuck out of their country.

The Bush regime’s lies and treasonable incompetence have left our armies stranded in a no-win killbox, hostage to forces that hate us, and our futures hostage to events rapidly spiraling beyond our control.

And the only solution being sold by from the back of the Dear Leader’s snake oil wagon is an even bigger bottle of Clap!Even!Louder!

His lapdog Republicans in Congress are so terrified of debating the rank criminality that now reeks off of Abu G’s Justice Department and erupts daily into the media like gangrene that they refuse to allow it to come to a vote.

And he personally is so terrified of having to answer hard questions about his failed war that he has refused to re-nominate Peter Pace to his own jobb; the same man in which the Dear Leader placed such limitless confidence less than two years ago. Effectively firing Pace just to make sure that nobody in his Administration who knows the dirty, tragic realities of what is really unfolding in Iraq is ever put under oath in front of a Congress that is no longer permitted to function as Dubya’s personal shit-scraper, glory hole and getaway car.

While in the wilds of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden laughs and laughs and laughs.

All of which is brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party, because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.