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It looks more and more like we're in a sucker's game of three-card monte here, and there's no pea under any of the shells. I'd be curious to see what would happen if we threatened to just pull out completely and let these ingrates start killing each other.

We need to be thinking about nuclear bombs in Iran, folks. If you find this little Iranian putsch frustrating, think about what costs a blackmailer can charge when he has nuclear bombs.

Who is paying for this silly madhi army? Iran.

Think about who is watching our reactions. The media won't look past its nose, but we can.

Iran would essentially take over the country, except for the Kurdish area, if we walked out now.

Its a very tough situation. We cannot unleash the full brunt of the military force we know we have. The large majority of the Shia are still with us (Sistani, et al), but if we have some kind of mass civilian casualty collateral damage, that could change. We might be able to get away with this in Fallujah, since its Sunni, but not in the other locations.

If "regular Shia" start joining up with the Sadr forces en masse, its over, we've lost the war. I really think its that simple, if we don't keep 95+% of the Shia neutral or tilting towards the US, we're done. We can't start slaughtering these people that we liberated by the thousands. I think that's why we see some hedging; some attempts to diffuse this, to contain it, to buy time and build up the iraqi defense and police forces to be able to provide at least some order by 6/30. If Iraq is only as bad as most American inner cities, that's will be more then good enough.

This whole thing is very precarious right now.