Keep Them Guessing

Perhaps Muqtada al-Sadr has an open source collection cell. If so, he's getting mixed signals as noted below --

Here's a headline from the 19 January edition of The Miami Herald by the Associated Press:
"U.S. may have go ahead to take on Sadr's militia."

A day earlier, Robert H. Reid, of the Associated Press, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, authored this report with the title, "US commanders reluctant to take on Shiite militia."

According to the former report, five top aides have been either killed or captured in the past few months. Perhaps rather than going for a full Fallujah style offensive, US Forces are preferring a more indirect route of going for the leadership -- believing that the followers would scatter.

So let them keep guessing and worrying. A toothless and scared militia is in Iraq's best interest.