Solid Reporting from our excellent blogosphere rapporteurs, Chenkoff with a lovely new lot of good news from Iraq, and Omar of Iraq the Model. I love it when they (I.t.M.) diss that Sadr muppet. Speaking frankly, the respectful tone adopted by the official media, describing him as a leading cleric or something like that, or describing his so-called followers as 'militiamen loyal' to said 'cleric', makes me feel a bit sick. Thus it is like a successful bowel movement after a time of discomfort when the brothers in Iraq make themselves plain:

'this man doesn’t have the slightest margin of manners let alone brains! And I believe that who calls Muqtada a “cleric” is totally mistaken and is unnecessarily offending the clerics; I’m not fond of them anyway (not forgetting that some of them are wise and respectable men) but at least in general they talk and behave in a much better way than this idiot.'

Reading more closely what the brothers have to say, I see we share similiar 'gut' feelings about the younger Sadr's phenomenon.