[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Times of UK is following the LA Times Story line:

Nouri al-Maliki humiliated as gamble to crush Shia militias fail

****************************EXCERPT***************************

At the Sadr Office in the centre of the massive slum in northeast Baghdad, home to 2.5 million impoverished Shias, the receptionists greeted visitors with sweets to mark their victory over Nouri al-Maliki, the increasingly isolated Iraqi

Prime Minister, who directed the assault on Shia rogue militias in Basra, the lawless southern oil city. “This is for victory over Maliki,” one said with a grin. “The fighting ended on our terms.”

Certainly Mr al-Maliki’s huge gamble appeared to have failed yesterday. Having vowed to crush Shia militias with a 30,000-strong force in Basra, he ended up suing for peace with the people he had described as “worse than al-Qaeda”. Al-Mahdi Army kept its weapons and turf.

Sheikh Salman al-Freiji, the head of the Sadr Office, said that Mr al-Maliki was a tool in the hands of the Americans. “The American project has been to split the Iraqi sects and community from Day_1,” he said. “They tried to split Sunnis from Shia. Now that has failed, they are trying to split the Shia.” He said that an al-Mahdi Army freeze on operations, introduced in August, was still in place but reserved the right to attack the “illegitimate American occupation”.

[tobyhill]

The media is spinning this anyway they can to save their own face. It was just two days earlier the media claimed Sadr's militia wouldn't leave the streets but they left. Now the media is claiming that Maliki made a deal to release the captured that haven't been charged but that would have happened anyway if they weren't charged. They claim Iran is the broker of peace but now we find out that the ratlines were blocked and the militia was running out of ammo. Of course Iran was begging for it to stop, their inventory was getting depleted. Saturday the media claimed Sadr's militia controlled over 75% of Basra but today they claim the Iraqi troops control the streets but are still losing. It's really strange that the MSM claims Maliki was the one that surrendered yet the Iraqi Troops are still conducting ops in Basra. The MSM is playing the same game with Maliki as they've been playing with Bush, Move The Goalpost.