They watch Pelosi and many others on C-Span and CNN. This may be the needed last push to get the U.S. to stand down completely.
To state it briefly and bluntly, the generals were in a position to crush al Sadr in April-May 2004, when he operated in Najaf... basically thumbing his nose at us out in the open... but the interim government nixed it. That was also when we could have levelled Fallujah, and avenged the death, torture, mutilations of our American contractors.
But the U.S already had a view to "hearts and minds," caved in to warnings from the "Governing Council" and adopted a middle course, i.e., appeasement.
I haven't gotten around to reading *My Year in Iraq* by Paul Bremer and don't know if I will, but it covers that time frame. We learn, over and over again, that the military has been constrained from doing what they want to do and can do.
Now, as you pointed out Jezebelle, with the ascendance of Nancy Pelousy and the Cut'n'Run crowd, it is like another, brighter green light to al Sadr. They do watch our traitor media, for sure.
The best outcome of this is that their boldness makes them careless AND that our newly installed military leadership has an EVEN BRIGHTER green light to finally take out the "Mahdi Army."