Not a Good Sign in Iraq: al-Sadr's "Triad of Evil"

As I noted in a previous posting, the Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political capital has been growing among Shiites. While the elected government seems incapable of carrying out its constitutional duties, al-Sadr comes across as a man who gets things done. His militias provide something that neither the government or the US Army can--security.

After the bombing of the Samarra mosque, al-Sadr acted as something of a conciliator, calling for Shiites and Sunnis to overcome their animosities and turn them against what he called the source of all their problems--the occupying US forces. Now, al-Sadr is ratcheting up the rhetoric, and alluding to Bush's own rhetroic of the "Axis of Evil," al-Sadr has called for all Iraqis to take on the the Americans. ...

Not only that, but he has also placed blame for the bombing on the US, Britian, and Israel, a "triad of evil," he says, echoing Bush. This is not a ghood sign, as I remarked before, because if he is successful in turning the population against the US Army, they will be faced with fighting an entire country, not just a mercurial insurgency. The US Army will then face the potential extermination of its soldiers, as former Senator Gary Hart remarked the other day.

According to Haaretz:

In a television interview Friday night, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr described the United States, Israel and Britain as a "Triad of Evil."

Speaking on state-run Iraqiya television, the anti-American al-Sadr also said last month's attack on a Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra was carried "in collusion with the occupiers and the Zionist Entity of Israel," meaning for the U.S. and Israel. Hundreds of Iraqis died in the subsequent sectarian violence, much of which Sunni Muslims said was the work of al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army.

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