Good news out of Iraq is becoming almost a daily event: In just the past week, we learned that U.S. combat fatalities (five) dropped in July to a low for the war, that key leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq have fled to the Pakistani hinterland, that troop deployments will soon be cut to 12 months from 15, and that Washington and Baghdad are close to concluding a status-of-forces agreement.
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr plans to announce Friday that he will disarm his Mahdi Army, which was raining mortars on Baghdad's Green Zone as recently as April. Coupled with the near-total defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, this means the U.S. no longer faces any significant organized military foe in the country. It also marks a major setback for Iran, which had used the Mahdi Army as one of its primary vehicles for extending its influence in Iraq.
In many respects, the story of the Mahdi Army's decline follows the same pattern as al Qaeda's: Not only was it routed militarily, it also made itself noxious to the very Shiite population it purported to represent and defend. It enforced its heavy-handed religious edicts, coupled with mob-like extortion tactics, wherever it assumed effective control. The overwhelming Shiite rejection of this brand of politics is another piece of good news from Iraq, as it means that Iraqis will not tolerate Iranian-style theocratic rule.
RUSH: The Mahdi army is going to be restructured into a social services organization, if you can believe this. The Mahdi army is going to become a bunch of community organizers. And because of the ego of Barack Obama, I fully expect at some point in the campaign not too far from now, Obama will suggest or make mention of the fact that in his discussions while he was in Baghdad.
Obama is going to say, in his discussions, while he was in Baghdad he discussed with various elements the use of opposition forces in a productive way to help secure our policies in Iraq. So now Mookie and his boys are going to become community organizers. And, of course, that's what Obama did. And who better to advise Mookie than Obama?
Seriously, that's what he's going to do. They're going to -- social services, education, social justice. I guess Mookie's thrown his hands in with the left over there. He's going to throw down the weapons and start disrupting the society much like the civil rights organizations here in this country have tried to do.
War's over GOD BLESS AMERICA.
