This dirtbag cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has to go. There's no two ways about it.

George Will, as usual, has a good, thoughtful analysis of our current tough situation in Iraq. It's bad enough to have to suck up the old Shiite ayatollah, Ali Sistani, and deal with all the brewing internecine hostilities that threaten a civil war.

This Moqtada al-Sadr has declared open war on the US, though, and that absolutely cannot be tolerated. Screw worrying about national pride or any such thing, but if we do anything less than squish this murdering thug, we will have hell on our hands- and not just in Iraq.

Then there is this report from Salam, our man on the ground in Baghdad:

Remember the days when every time you hear an Iraqi talk on TV you had to remember that they are talking with a Mukhabarat minder looking at them noting every word? We are back to that place.

You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands reach every where and you don't want to be on their shit list. Every body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and how they describe Sadir's Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs. There you have it.

Oh HELL no. We haven't come this far to turn the country over to some punk ayatollah. Why would we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like that?

This guy has to be terminated with extreme prejudice. If some people get mad, ten times as many will THANK us- which is really probably closer to the overall picture in Iraq now.