[Billthedrill]

What is happening here is the "grass" level is going down to expose folks who would have been able to continue their activities in a noisier environment. That's why they were revolutionaries once, then terrorists, and now mere criminals. The significant thing isn't that Mook is now exposed as an embarrassing sore thumb, it's that the noise level is down.

A lot of people who expected victory to be a single, defining event may be surprised at this slow emergence. But I do think this is what it looks like. BTT.

[Crimson Elephant]

McCain can’t really claim it, but he has been right almost from day one on Iraq. Right to go in, right that we didn’t go in hard enough or have a post occupation plan, right about the need for a surge, right that it would work, and right that we should be able to stay there for 100 years like Korea.

[Marine_Uncle]

Your comments at #18. Couldn't agree more. And as the remaining hardliner Madhi adherents become a minuscule ratio of what they once where, the Sadr movement will die out mostly in silence.
Besides. More Shia he once held power over must at this point understand his militia is illegal from the constitutional standpoint. So they have no beef.