When the populist Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr emerged from 14 weeks of invisibility on May 25, it was hard not to focus on his typically passionate anti-Coalition rhetoric: "No, no to America; no, no to occupation," he thundered from the mosque at Kufa, Iraq, a ragged town a few miles north of rich holy city of Najaf.
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Sadr is supporting what remains of hope in Iraq far more actively than it appears.
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The real story about Moktada al-Sadr is not his exciting sermons but his broad underwriting, both passive and active, of the official project in Iraq.