Some government forces have defected. The Basra police chief was almost assassinated. In Baghdad, Mahdi forces simply took over neighborhoods by ordering police to leave their checkpoints, which many of them did.
One witness saw Iraqi Shia policemen rip off their uniform shirts and run for shelter with local Sunni neighbourhood patrols, most of them made up of former insurgents wooed by the US military into fighting al-Qaeda.
Other southern Iraq cities besides Basra, like Kut, are starting to fall under Mahdi control.
It’s no wonder that retiring Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel called President bush’s latest detached from reality speech on Iraq “another episode of ‘Alice in Wonderland’” (with video clip).
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