OK, who wants to believe at face value a Sadr spokesman’s claim that the Shiite clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Sistani (who is on the record opposing militias), have told Sadr to keep his militias and continue the bloodshed of the Shiites in Iraq? Well, CNN did:

raq’s top Shiite religious leaders have told anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr not to disband his Mehdi Army, an al-Sadr spokesman said Monday amid fresh fighting in the militia’s Baghdad strongholds.

Did anyone get confirmation of this from the cleric council themselves? Is this another case of the SurrenderMedia seeing what the want and not checking the facts? If you look at the last paragraph of the CNN story you can get a hint of what might happen – because it is dead wrong:

Al-Sadr has called for a mass demonstration in Baghdad on Wednesday against the U.S. presence in Iraq. That protest that would coincide with the fifth anniversary of the toppling of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s government, which fell as a U.S.-led army entered the Iraqi capital.

Somehow CNN missed the news Sadr called off the protest march. We will know soon enough if CNN was duped again or not. If the Sadr spokesperson (possibly in Iran) is right the Iraqi Shiite leaders will remain silent. And if he is trying a propaganda stunt they will make a statement contradicting the news media (what an oxymoron that phrase has become).