shiite militia

The big talk last week  was the al-Sadr had fled the country and was not an influence anymore. Of course people like CNN's Michael Ware said that is far from the truth. Well once again it looks like the military was wrong and the others were right:

The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite militia complained Sunday that bombs "continue to explode" in Baghdad and that U.S.-led security crackdown is doomed to fail, issuing a statement the same day a suicide attacker struck outside a college campus, killing at least 41 people.

Many Shiites believe that bombings have continued because the Shiite-led government bowed to American pressure and persuaded the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to take his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets.

Al-Sadr's statement, read to his followers in Sadr City, is likely to add pressure on U.S. and Iraqi forces to show results in the nearly two-week-old crackdown.

"I'm certain, just like all oppressed Iraqis are certain, that no security plan will work and no good will come of any occupier," al-Sadr said in the statement. "Here we are, watching booby trapped cars exploding to harvest thousands of innocent lives from our beloved people in the middle of a security plan that is controlled by an occupier who does as he pleases."

Of course the article goes on to say that we still believe he is in Iran, but how trustworthy is that? We are relying upon the same people that said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction after all.

There are still a few on the right (mainly in the administration) who would
want to make you think that Iraq has calmed down and is going well again. Well
this sure doesn't have that same song and dance:

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's
bombing of a Shiite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the
past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives,
according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times
higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news
media.

Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday --
blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated
by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled
with their hands still bound -- and many of them had wound up at the morgue
after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the
Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Article continues

here.

I don't know how Bush defines civil war but with that many dead within a
single country it certainly appears to fall closer into the standard definition.