so here's the kind of scandal that breaks ten years later, but of which we're already seeing the leading edge. it's going to turn out that "anti-american cleric muqtada al-sadr" is being indirectly, but in bits connivingly, funded by the united states. remember when cheney's office was kind of circulating the notion that we should simply side with the shiites, cause the sunnis are such a carbomb painsintheass? well, we more or less have, and pulled back verbally or operationally only when it became obvious that this was a formula for the entire breakdown of everything (or anything that was left). you're going to find that we have (through our iraqi government) armed the death squads etc. and i think that we scouted this as a strategy in counter-insurgency, that maliki probably thought he was being winked at as he funnelled resources in that direction, avoided any legal or military action against militias etc.