Iraq war about to get ugly again and cost more U.S. soldiers lives

Things are indeed looking grim in Iraq today. Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave a "final warning" to the government Saturday to halt a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown against his followers or he would declare "open war until liberation." Al-Sadr was responsible for the cease fire over the last 6 months which significantly reduced the violence in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite, has ordered al-Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army, Iraq's biggest Shiite militia, or face a ban from politics.

I have said here many times that when one examines all the variables that seem to best correlate to the reduction of violence such as the "surge", buying Sunni loyalty with U.S. Dollars over Al Qaeda, and finally Cleric Al-Sadr's cease fire. It is the cease fire that correlated the best to significantly reduced levels of violence. Now we face a return to the previous violence levels which were the highest in 2007 over all the previous years. This will certainly be bad news for our troops who already have served too many deployments. It ultimately is also bad for John McCain's position on the war and good for Barack's who was opposed to the war all along.

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