"It's Alabama in Arabic."

Christian Parenti, writing in the Nation: News from Planet Fallujah.

Choice bit:

Tariq, at the edge of a couch in our hotel, reads his verbatim notes quoting [the leader of the cell that watched over Tariq]: "We are all sinners, Tariq, all of us, I swear. The things we've done make us sinners. There was a Turkoman who ran a hotel; he had a wife and family. We thought he was a spy, so we beat him. We broke every bone in his body, but he wouldn't confess. Then we cut a checkerboard in his back with a knife and poured salt on his wounds. He begged us to kill him but he would not confess. We knew by then that he was innocent. To kill him was an act of mercy. We are sinners all, Tariq."

Moqtada al-Sadr had a bulls-eye painted on his back by the CPA. That did not availeth much: the Occupation forces backed out of Fallujah after taking heavy casualties, and as this story indicates, the shooting and bombing continues around the fringes. Now al-Sadr is on his way into whatever form of government Iraq will produce. Fallujah is his turf.

Is Iraq on its way from centralized mob rule - the Tikriti Mafia - to balkanized mob rule? Wow, what an improvement. Some days, I just want to grab Dubya's press secretary by his tie, shove stories like News from Planet Fallujah in his face, and yell, "Spin this, why doncha!"