Surprised

From ThinkProgress: McCain ‘Surprised’ By Events In Basra, Uninformed About How Ceasefire Occurred.

THINK PROGRESS: Asked if Maliki’s Basra campaign had “backfired,” McCain replied, “Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire, declared a ceasefire. It wasn’t Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a ceasefire. So we’ll see.”

Actually, it was apparently members of Maliki’s own government who traveled to Iran and requested the cease-fire, to which Sadr agreed. Maliki’s government then issued a statement praising Sadr, after Maliki insisted less than a week ago that there would be “no negotiation.”

---- A sharp-eyed and thinking poster commented to the above with :

Actually, it was apparently members of Maliki’s own government who traveled to Iran and requested the cease-fire...

"Actually, your cited source for this statement is a Salon piece by Juan Cole which refers to… “the cease-fire called Sunday by Shiite leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the millions-strong Sadr Movement,” …without any further qualification of this statement, nor any mention of Maliki involvement. Rather hard to criticize someone for stating the same thing Juan Cole does on the topic of Shiite militias, especially when that’s your own source for the contradiction."

Here is Cole's opinion piece being referred to above.

What a pitiful attempt by Think Progress, one of many in the "progressive" arena, to portray the doddering McCain as a senile bumbler.

What seems to go unnoticed by the average Joe Progressive, running around on-line looking for "truth", is that Muqtada al-Sadr, issuing orders to his Basra army from Qom, Iran, is proof of some degree of Iranian involvement in the chaos in Iraq - which has been BushCo's accusations for some time.