President Al Sadr?

Radical Shiite Cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr is back in Iraq after a 4 month hiatus in Iran and is sounding like a politician.

Of course his speech was vehemently anti-American, but peppered into the speech was a criticism of the Iraqi governments' inability to provide basic services to the populace and a call for his followers to stop fighting with Iraqi security forces. Amazingly, he reached out to Sunni Muslims, calling them brothers and wanting to cooperate with them on all levels. He also appealed to Iraqi nationalistic pride. I think during his 14 weeks in Iran he just may have been studying American politicians that can reinvent themselves every so often, depending on the office they are running for and the political climate (not that Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were intentionally trying to help al-Sadr).

Later that evening, al-Sadrs' Mahdi Army later laid siege to an Iraqi Police Station in the southern city of Basra. Either his fighters hadn't gotten the message yet about not engaging Iraqi security forces, or al-Sadr really learned his lessons well on American politics (talk a good game ... then do whatever you want).

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