Beneath the Surface

Political machinations in Iraq? IraqPundit doesn't come out and say it but a reading between the lines seems to point in that direction:

But while there's violence in the streets of Baghdad everyday, there may be more to this attack than the brief news dispatches suggest.

Adel Abdul Mahdi could soon replace the ineffectual Nouri Al Maliki as Iraq's prime minister, and if he does, it will be with the happy agreement of every political player in Iraq except himself and Moktada Al Sadr. Thus, if Abdul Mahdi does become PM, then Al Sadr, who is regularly touted by a pernicious Western press as "the most powerful man in Iraq," would be reduced to a back-bencher thug, heading a minority bloc in parliament as well as leading a bloodthirsty militia that, he claims, he no longer controls.

Here's the background.

Finish it and you find that political levers are moving.