Uh...he actually thinks the PM of the Iraq will just get up and leave one of his own cities because a random cleric said so? Mook-man is full of Shi’ite.
*should say PM of Iraq....I really shouldn’t FReep after midnight
Well, al-Maliki is really just a warlord, and not the most powerful warlord out there. The Iraqi state isn't powerful, and he's hardly in control of what there is. The army at al-Maliki's back in al-Basra is composed of several armed militias within the Iraqi Army, some are loyal to al-Maliki's Dawa Party and others (such as the Badrists) have formed a marriage of convenience for the purpose of reducing al-Sadr's power.
al-Sadr is considerably weaker than he has been, certainly, but he's still the single most powerful and influential figure in Iraq. If the US pulled out tomorrow, he would overthrow the al-Maliki regime and become the leader of around 2/3 of the country in about a minute and a half.
First I am getting mixed signals that Mookie is off his hospital bed and out of his coma. Has he been seen by anyone in Basra?
Secondly, Basra is about 300 yards across the Shatt Al Arab from Iran, so orders can be coming directly from Iranians in Mookie’s name. And Islamic Iranian leadership will happily order Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki out of Basra or any other city if it suits the Ahmadi-Nejad and Khamenei Mullocracy.
Thirdly one of the cities seized by the Mookies is the main arms smuggling, frontier transition route from Iran into Iraq and they must need to replenish deadly force supplies, arms/explosives etc.,inside Iraq. There were unexplained explosions in some of the main Iranian factories that normally supply these and production suffered.
I had a sneaky, happy feeling we had a part in those. Now the deaths will go up again just as Al Qaeda was on the run.