---they've received word that militias loyal to a controversial Muslim cleric will try to take over the Iraqi capital on Thursday---
That's a big load straight from the bull!
"Things are getting hot in Baghdad!" Winton Blount IV wrote in a Sunday e-mail from Amman, Jordan. I was going to make fun of his name, but then figured, hey, it's funny enough just sitting there on the page.
It reminds me of the opening line in one of C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."