This looks like very significant news:

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

One of Iraq's most influential Shiite clerics rejected a U.S.-backed proposal to isolate Shiite extremists in the national government, saying the country should govern itself with the help of anti-U.S. firebrand Muqtada Sadr, according to politicians who spoke with the cleric Saturday.

Shiite politicians met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in this Shiite holy city, and then said they had thrown their support behind Sadr, who demands a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq rather than the temporary increase under consideration in Washington.

How significant? The right-wing blog Hot Air says this:

I don’t know where we go from here, except maybe home.

Bush may have convinced his generals to accept more troops in Iraq, but can he persuade the Shiite Iraqis?


posted by Quiddity at 12/25/2006 05:45:00 AM