If the US is "winning" in Iraq, as the toadies of the Bush Administration and their sycophants like to claim, then why is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is arguably the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, giving this response to a question:
Q: "I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?"
A: "Selling foodstuffs to the Occupying Powers is not permitted."
Tell me how this is a sign of winning, guys.
If you read that story and this one, both on Juan Cole's blog, it is hard to avoid the impression that all of the Shiite clerics are in the process of lining up against the continued occupation by the Coalition of the Bribed in Iraq. If you are of the "that fails to pass the `so, what' test" persuasion, consider that Sistani's sect controls the Badr Organization, the most powerful militia in Iraq and, during the recent fighting in Basra, thousands of Badrists joined the Iraqi Army.
If Cole is right that Sistani is drifting towards issuing a fatwa for direct action against the occupying forces, then things are going to get very bad very fast. If we were to then continue stay in Iraq, our only option then would be to both brutally suppress the Shiites and put a Sunni strongman in charge.
Which would bring us right back to status quo ante.
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Actually, Sistani is the only player in this charade who does *not* have his own militia. That is one reason why he has been so circumspect in the dealings between Sadr and Maliki (who IS the guy with the Badr Brigades). But the problem is, the Shia in the Iraqi Army who are NOT Badrists or Sadrists listen to Sistani, so if all three of these guys come out and say "end the occupation", the Iraqi Army completely disintegrates as a fighting force. Nobody would be left but the Peshmerga (the Sunni have already been purged), and the Peshmerga would look around at each other, realize they're the only ones left, and skeedaddle back to Kurdistan to defend it.
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