Major Update: It seems the UK news media, which is not as vested in a US defeat in Iraq as our American SurrenderMedia, has reported on the pending victory for Maliki against Sadr:

From The Times
April 7, 2008
Iraq: Al-Mahdi army offers to lay down its arms

Iraq’s largest and most dangerous militia, the Mahdi Army, will disband voluntarily if leading Shia scholars advise its leader to do so, officials said today, in a dramatic move that could quell much of the fighting in the country.

Aides to Hojetoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, who is under mounting political and military pressure, said that the militia chief would send delegations to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a moderate religious leader in Najaf, and to senior clerics in Qom in Iran to consult on whether he should stand down his 60,000-strong militia.

The sudden announcement came as Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, Commander of US Forces in Iraq, starts two days of testimony to Congress on the success of America’s troop “surge”.

…

The position of Hojetoleslam al-Sadr, whose fighters had fought government forces to a standstill in Basra, was looking increasingly precarious today. His erstwhile ally, Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister, who led the Basra crackdown personally, saw his popular support bolstered by his tough stance on lawless militias.

Despite the inconclusive results of his Basra offensive, Mr al-Maliki has refused to back down and this weekend stitched together a rare consensus of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias to back a draft law banning any party that maintains a militia from running in future elections.

A massive American and Iraqi security presence had ringed the area, with police and soldiers guarding every exit as many people here predicted a final, bloody showdown with the Mahdi Army, which appeared to be losing popular support.

Those poor Surrendercrats on The Hill cannot lose for winning. It seems we have a victory in Iraq over the Mahdi Militias, to go with the victory over al-Qaeda. And we have seen in past months legislation passed that represents major progress in creating an integrated Iraq across the various factions, and we have new Iraqi elections coming. Only someone in serious denial would see all this as a defeat. Maybe they will come out with some wild conspiracy about how this is a US plot run by VP Cheney to take over the world.

What is clear is those poor, doom & gloom democrats won’t see the second coming of Vietnam after all. This was THE DEMOCRAT’s Tet Offensive – it was the terrorists and insurgents who buckled under the surge of Iraqi and US forces, and it was the Dems who predicted that they would win the day. Now the Dems will reap the rewards of their obsessive defeatism – most likely at the polls in November. They are no longer credible on national security. – end update

Well, that did not take long. I barely got my previous post finished on how bad a week the Surrendercrats are going to have when old “Mookie” al-Sadr comes out in a stunning announcement and says he will disband his Mahdi Militia if the central Shia council tells him to:

raqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will disband his Mehdi Army militia if top Shi’ite clerics including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani order him to do so, a senior Sadr aide told Reuters on Monday.

Aide Hassan Zargani told Reuters that Sadr had told his representatives in both the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and also the Iranian city of Qom to ask top Shi’ite religious leaders for advice on whether to dissolve the militia.

“If they order the Mehdi Army to disband, Moqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr movement will obey the orders of the religious leaders,” said Zargani, who was speaking from Iran.

As I noted previously the Shia council apparently is already on board with the disarming of the Sadr’s militia since they were aligned with Maliki on exiling anyone who has militia’s from political office:

Parliament was also planning to isolate al-Mahdi Army by drafting a Bill banning parties that maintain militias from running for office. It was backed by a rare alliance of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties, although several of the parties involved run militias themselves.

Mr al-Maliki’s main backer in Government, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, which has often fought the more powerful al-Mahdi Army. “We want the Sadrists to disband al-Mahdi Army. Just freezing it is no longer acceptable,” an adviser to Mr al-Maliki said. “The new election law will prevent any party that has weapons or runs a militia from contesting elections.”

And Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been pretty clear about the militia’s as well:

Iraq’s national security adviser has said that the country’s most senior Shia cleric supports a government attempt to disarm the country’s sectarian militias.

Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said he had secured Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s support during a meeting in the city of Najaf on Wednesday.

The Shia clergyman gave his assent as Iraq’s government pushed ahead with a plan that will attempt to stablise Baghdad, the country’s capital, by disarming Shia and Sunni militias.

Sadr is grasping for a face saving way out of the mess he is in. He thought he could resist the central government and is learning he is not gaining support, but losing it at a stunning rate. So he must sue for peace now, and will use the council as his cover to surrender.

Which leaves the Surrendercrats and SurrenderMedia in a fine pickle as they try and spin the situation in Iraq as a pending failure – after a year of incredible successes. The only chance they had to paint Iraq as out of control was the Shia militias. al-Qaeda has been beaten severely in the last year and is trying to hold onto their last foothold in the north – which won’t be possible. And now Sadr has basically pulled the rug out from the Surrendercrats by quitting the ‘civil war’.

What is a defeatist democrat to do when all their allies in the insurgency and terrorist camps keep losing? My suggestion is to eat their crow with humility and respect for their betters, who showed how America can attain victory in Iraq and cripple al-Qaeda in the process. Will they admit their mistakes? Hell no – they will make up pure fantasies and try and promote the idea they were never wrong and it was them who fixed Iraq by trying to lose it to our enemies. If you want comedy, Congress will be the place to watch this week.