Garbage reporting on Iraq from the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3631718.ece

Try this exercise. Compare the hysterical, overwrought loser attitude of the above with the reasoned, well-informed clarity of the article below.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/whittling_away_at_sadr.html

What becomes clear is how ignorant, naive and trivial the Times' reporting is.

'Mr al-Maliki has gambled everything on the success of Operation Saulat al-Fursan, or Charge of the Knights, to sweep illegal militias out of Basra.'

Really? Everything?

Austin Bay- 'Think of the Iraqi anti-Sadr method as a form of suffocation, a political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani that requires daily economic and political action, persistent police efforts and occasional military thrusts.'

Times- 'In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army took over neighbourhood after neighbourhood, some amid heavy fighting, others without firing a shot.' Er.... the JAM have controlled poor Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad for years. Where have the Times idiots been? How is it possible to report stories while having so little grasp of the material facts? Everybody who has been following Iraq for any length of time knows who the major players are, where they are, what there agendas are, and what their most likely 'economies with the truth' are. JAM are a major player. They have a lot of grunts- poor, illiterate Shia blokes willing to murder on behalf of Moqtada Al-Sadr. What they don't have is the legitimacy of the Iraqi state. And now that the Sunni minority are on board with the Iraqi state, and the Kurds need the Iraqi state to protect them from Turkey, the Shia militias are subject to two long-term difficulties - they are percieved as proxies of Iran and therefore not Iraqi enough, and the Iraqi state is backed by 160,000 highly effective American troops every single day.

The job the Iraqi state under Mr Maliki has taken on is to insert a wedge between poor Shia and the JAM. Just like Austin Bay points out, thats a long long process. Absolutely necessary, probably very tough at times, but definitely worth doing in the end. The trick will be to give the poor Shia of the South and centre things which the JAM can't- prosperity, education, long-term security. Weaning them off the siren voice of the militia propagandists won't be easy, but if the Iraqi government ever wants to be able to say that its voice is the voice of all of Iraq, there's no shirking the task.

According to the Times, the JAM are the all-conquering heroes of a 10-minute battle, who have devastated Maliki politically and militarily. Who is paying these bozos, and why?