[link|http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=|Howell Raines may be gone, but still a grain of salt]

Excerpt:

Najaf is the home to four respected ayatollahs, the senior Shiite leaders to whom the faithful look for guidance on virtually all aspects of daily life. The ayatollahs and their supporters were conspicuously absent from today's events, because they view Mr. Sadr and his followers as little more than young hotheads determined to make a name for themselves by stirring up violence against the occupation.

Mr. Sadr's father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, was an outspoken defender of the Shiites before being gunned down in 1999 in a killing attributed to Saddam Hussein's henchman.

Out of respect for his father and not wanting to increase the younger cleric's allure, the ayatollahs and other Shiite political groups have mostly remained silent in public about the situation.

"Moktada Sadr and his supporters are trying to drag us into this kind of confrontation, this kind of division between Shiites on the street," said a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the most established Shiite group and a participant in the Governing Council.

But even the local Supreme Council office had apparently not gotten word that the American military movements on Saturday were not reacting to Mr. Sadr's Friday sermon. "The American policy should be calmer, they should not react so hastily to what he said," the spokesman added.

He and others say that much of the new militancy in the Shiite community is being pushed by former Baathists, happy to find any channel they can to create unrest.

Support for the demonstrators came from Iran, too. The protest opened with a message of support from Ayatollah Kathim al-Husseini al-Haeri, an Iraqi clergyman in the holy Iranian city of Qom. Members of the Governing Council were all American agents, he said in a message read aloud to the crowd, while the clerics remain the legitimate rulers.

Random comments on the street appeared to show little support for the demonstration on Saturday among the people in Najaf itself, and even two clergyman wandering through the shrine were wondering what all the fuss was about.

"What do we need an Islamic army for?" said Riad Abu al-Awady, a 23-year-old Najaf resident. "Many members of my family fought in Saddam's wars and they are all dead. What Iraqis need is water, electricity, security, and we want to work."

I say:

That's all coming along, despite the recent sabotage and the years of neglect. And the real problem with an "Islamic" army isn't the "army" part.

I still think it would be better to carve Iraq up along ethnic/sectarian lines. That way they don't have to deal with each other, and each subculture can prosper or fail largely on its own merits. But I'll still give this council thing a chance.