Juan Cole of Informed Comment has written a gem of an opinion piece, "As premier loses stature, radical cleric is gaining it" that resonated with me for a couple of key money quotes:
Sadr joined the other Shiite fundamentalist leaders in the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition that governs Iraq, in fall of 2005, just before the election of the regular parliament. ... The young cleric demanded in return that the Iraqi government commit to setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Subsequent Iraqi prime ministers have reneged on that agreement, to Sadr's outrage.
and
( Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-) Maliki belongs to the secretive, fundamentalist Islamic Call Party (Dawa), founded in the late 1950s to compete with the Communist Party of Iraq by working for an Islamic rather than a worker's utopia. Dawa expatriates helped set up Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s, but now in power in Baghdad, they have formed a marriage of convenience with the Bush administration.
The reasons these two quotes seem important are that they both contain facts that are part of the historical record, that is (1) Sadr was promised a timetable for American withdrawal and the promise was broken and (2) portions of Maliki's organization helped set up Hezbollah. These facts are ignored in the US press. Imagine if every time Maliki was mentioned it was as "Maliki, whose party's support of Hezbollah is being ignored by Bush," and if Sadr was "Sadr, who helped elect Maliki in exchange for a subsequently broken promise of a timetable for American withdrawal"
It is useful to read Informed Comment Juan Cole's blog just to see the critical facts that are missing from the US Press. Incidentally, in addition to be a very smart educated articulate man, he seems to be the luckiest scholar in the world in that before 911, he apparently devoted his studies to the obscure question of the Shiite branch of Islam in modern Iraq, Iran and the Gulf.
Incidentally, just to be sure you understand, he is also under almost continuous attack from neocons, and Likkud supporters.
Crossposted at unsourced.com