I doubt purple fingers will be on display in October

With Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s fizzled attempt to suppress Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army by silence, Sadr and his followers are probably right about this:

The Sadrists believe the goal was to weaken their movement before provincial elections this fall. Al-Sadr's followers expect to make major gains in the regional voting at the expense of al-Maliki's Shiite partners in the government.

So, if politics by other means didn’t work, expect Maliki to practice politics by yet other means in the fall —

• Voter intimidation;
• Ballot-box stuffing;
• Ballot-box tampering;
• Pre-emptive disqualification of candidates, a la Iran.

I can probably think of more if you give me enough time.

Since the provincial elections are scheduled for before our general elections, Preznit Bush, Uncle Fester and others will probably pull their fingers out of their asses or Dutch Boy dikes, dip ’em in purple, and loudly hail “democracy” meaning we need to stay in Iraq for John McCain’s 100 years.

Maliki forces being routed by Mahdi

In both Basra and Baghdad, the BushCo myth of “Iraqis standing up” is showing itself to be amongst the more vapid of his long list of brainlocked ideas. In battles between the Iraqi army militia of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and elements of the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, government forces are turning tail and running.

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).

So much for the Mahdi cease-fire extension

Expect a new round of civil conflict in Iraq. One militia group loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army says it will now longer obey the mythical “central government,” even as it started clamping down its control on west Baghdad neighborhoods.

The Sadrists in west Baghdad have three demands, that the government release detainees, stop targeting Sadrist members and apologize to the families and the tribal sheiks of the men.

Meanwhile, Sadr forces in Basra have started fighting government units after an attempted crackdown. The government launched that crackdown after Sadrists said they would resist any attempt at being detained. There, Iraqi government announced a three-day security plan, beginning 5 p.m. Tuesday, to seal Basra off from other Iraqi regions, and other countries, shut down schools and institutes of education and ban vehicles from entering the province.

It sounds like Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki probably pushed more than a bit too far.

Update: 22 have already died in Basra, and Sadr himself is calling for “civil revolt.” Shrub and Uncle Fester will keep their heads in the sand on this; Betrayus may prove that MoveOn was not totally correct about him (remember, as a highly political general, he has his eyes on November, too), but, we’ll see.

And, on the occasion of the 4,000th U.S. combat troop death, the Preznit was still looking for his pony:

“One day, people will look back at this moment in history and say, ‘Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.’”

No, many of us will say, Thank doorknob for the 22nd Amendment, so you couldn’t pull a bogus Iran attack out of your ass to try to run for a third term.