Going to be really busy today, so this has to be quick. Muqtada Sadr's uprising does seem to be a major turning point, but at this point it is not obvious in which direction.
Should the uprising spread and catch on in the wider Shia community, it obviously represents a disaster for the American occupation. If the US has to police or even fight in the Shia areas the way that it does in the Sunni triangle, it would seem that the current military deployments would simply be inadequate - and the Iraqi forces obviously are no substitute. And if it degenerates into open fighting for an extended period, it's hard to see how a political transition could proceed.
On the other hand, one could say that Sadr's forces represented a time bomb that would eventually have gone off anyway, so the US might as well confront him militarily now rather than closer to the handoff of power. That would explain the curious series of provocations - the closure of the newspaper and the arrests.
At the risk of being totally banal, the next 48 hours will tell us a lot about whether this will turn into a decisive military confrontation in which US forces defeat a minor but dangerous adversary, or into the beginnings of a widescale confrontation between the occupation forces and a significant portion of the Shia community.
Which way will it go? Time will tell, but the aardvark won't... because a giant pile of papers to grade and two papers with imminent deadlines are more pressing.
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