Things are going just swimmingly in Iraq

When it should be clear to anyone that has been paying attention that the only viable way of forming a stable democracy in Iraq is for the Iraqis to form a power-sharing agreement acceptable to a among the myriad groups in Iraq, we get this wonderful announcement:

"The nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his ministers to leave the Iraqi government because of its refusal to set a timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

A violent confrontation between America and the Sadrist movement, popular among the Shia majority, would mark a new stage in the four-year war in which the US has hitherto been fighting the minority Sunni community."

Thankfully we have the British press to let us know what's really going on with our war, because of course, our media only tells us the "bad news." But seriously, this bodes extremely badly for the US. I personally feel that al-Sadr and the Shia would like us to leave so that they can take over the country to pay the Sunnis back for the years they lived under Saddam's rule. If we lose the Shia, then we have "lost" the war - we would have no allies. It seems increasingly clear to me that no consensus rule can be achieved in Iraq - certainly when it seems that the Bush administration is putting little pressure on the Iraqis to form this consensus. This is why I think we need to leave - if a civil war is inevitable, then we might as well minimize the loss of American lives.