This is Iraq, now that al Sadr is back...

McClatchy Newspapers report that "The anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is reasserting authority over his movement after disappearing from public view for three months." As driftglass puts it...

On the one side, we are being targeting by the people we “liberated” and who who now clearly want us the fuck out of their country by any means necessary, and we operate hoping that their most powerful leader will somehow not keep kicking us in the throat.

On the other, we now arm and train the same people we overthrew and ousted four years ago, knowing that by night they reconstitute as death squads and kill each other and us.

Because they, too, want us the fuck out of their country.

The Bush regime’s lies and treasonable incompetence have left our armies stranded in a no-win killbox, hostage to forces that hate us, and our futures hostage to events rapidly spiraling beyond our control.

And the only solution being sold by from the back of the Dear Leader’s snake oil wagon is an even bigger bottle of Clap!Even!Louder!

His lapdog Republicans in Congress are so terrified of debating the rank criminality that now reeks off of Abu G’s Justice Department and erupts daily into the media like gangrene that they refuse to allow it to come to a vote.

And he personally is so terrified of having to answer hard questions about his failed war that he has refused to re-nominate Peter Pace to his own jobb; the same man in which the Dear Leader placed such limitless confidence less than two years ago. Effectively firing Pace just to make sure that nobody in his Administration who knows the dirty, tragic realities of what is really unfolding in Iraq is ever put under oath in front of a Congress that is no longer permitted to function as Dubya’s personal shit-scraper, glory hole and getaway car.

While in the wilds of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden laughs and laughs and laughs.

All of which is brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party, because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.