Four years on...

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"So long as our government requires the backing of an
aroused and informed public opinion
...it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."
--Margueritte Higgins

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“Extremist Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding, his followers are not contesting American forces” --Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), 4/8/07

"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don’t walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them - not against the sons of Iraq." --Muqtada al-Sadr, 4/9/07

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Four years ago today Baghdad fell. And the war against Iraq took a disastrous fork in the road. Now our military is bogged down in a desert quagmire and facing an adversary that is changing tactics, adapting to fight Americans.

Today, radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for a mass rally in Najaf, and he got it.

And it was disciplined. Scary, that, because it means his influence, even in hiding, is greater than previously thought. He is calling for Iraqi's to band together and fight the occupiers. He means the U.S., but he also means foreign fighters who are in the country instigating violence and committing terrorist acts against the citizens of Iraq.

There is more than a little reason to believe that if our forces started drawing down and repositioning, initial increases in violence would occur, but the situation would then start to stabilize.

I think it's worth a try.

Today in Iraq, on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, violence and bloodshed marched on, unabated. IED's were targeted at American troops, death-squad victims were found crumpled in the streets, American forces fired on an ambulance...

Just another ordinary day in the Garden of Eden.