Well, well. Seems the residents of Sadr City are damn glad to see the Iraqi Government show up. Example one:

One of the aims of the deal was to impose a four-day cease-fire and get troops into the district a few days later to impose law and order, clear bombs, and collect weaponry used by militias.

The Iraqi army entered the area on Friday. They were welcomed by the people of Sadr City and had started removing roadside bombs from the streets, Atta said at the time.

Example 2:

According to an Iraqi intelligence official, JAM and special groups extort over $1 million monthly from the hundreds of traders at Jamilla market, a sprawling area of wholesale warehouses that supply Baghdad’s merchants with bottled water, soft drinks, snack foods and canned goods.

“The businessmen are tired of it. They complain all the time. They don’t want to keep giving them their money,” Yehea said.

He and his men know Sadr City well. All are Shiites, and virtually all come from Sadr City themselves, although many have moved their families elsewhere because of death threats.

…

Yehea and his men, however, held and distinguished themselves in repelling repeated attacks, U.S. officers said.

“Col. Yehea is a very charismatic leader. He has a passion for what he does and it’s very clear,” said U.S. Amy Maj. Philip Halliburton, a military adviser who works with the Iraqi unit. “I see a pride of country, a ‘let’s do this for the country’ attitude, and that translates into the unit.”

Yehea believes a push into the main part of Sadr City is necessary and inevitable.

“We must have IA [Iraqi army] units over there, this is what I’ve heard from my leadership,” he said. “There is no way to stop this. If we were to stop, we’d give them a chance to reorganize.”

Iraqi military forces are already drawing up plans for entering Sadr City and have been consulting with U.S. military forces, U.S. and Iraqi forces said.

There are more examples out there and coming. What seems clear right now is that the Mahdi Army is fractioning into those who will listen to the Sadrists and those who have take their orders from elsewhere – most likely Iran. The fact is the Mahdi Forces are getting decimated and many are calling it quits:

Eight weeks of fighting have caused the Mahdi Army over 4,000 casualties (dead, wounded, captured, deserted). For an outfit estimated to have a peak strength of 6,000, that’s some pretty serious losses. The Mahdi Army can quickly recruit new gunmen. Nearly every family has at least one firearm. But the new recruits are green, and die easily in combat, if they don’t run and hide when the shooting starts. So the Mahdi Army has a manpower shortage. More resilient are the pro-Iran factions, which are sometimes led by Iranian Special Forces (Quds Force) operatives. There are several of these running around (and pursued by Iraqi troops and American Special Forces).

And more here:

After seven weeks of heavy fighting in Sadr City in northern Baghdad, the Mahdi Army recently signed a shaky truce with the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But splinter groups have not abided by the cease-fire, launching attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in southern Baghdad. Last week, roadside bombs barely missed two American convoys. On Friday night, someone fired a machine gun at American and Iraqi forces searching the neighborhood of unpaved roads, rancid pools of stagnant sewage and stray dogs that bark all night in mounds of trash. On Saturday, a U.S. patrol stumbled upon a bomb made out of a 155mm round buried in a street; that night, a dozen gun shots rang out just beyond the U.S. outpost in Risala.

“JAM guys are following Sadr’s cease-fire; special groups are attacking us,” said Army Capt. Sean Chase, a company commander stationed in Risala. JAM is the acronym for the al-Sadr militia’s Arabic name, Jaish al-Mahdi.

American troops believe the militants are trained and armed by Iran and terrorize the locals into providing them a haven. Chase says militants often press-gang Iraqis by threatening to harm them or their families. They also force shopkeepers to pay duty or face retribution.

“People are afraid of being killed, shaken down for money,” Chase said. “Basically, it’s the mafia operating by mafia rules.”

Basically the Islamo Fascists thugs cannot hide their true nature to the people they try and control through oppression. So when these Muslims are liberated their horror stories about the Islamo Fascists start spreading out, and them and those who back them go from being the future of Islam to the enemy of Islam. It has been happening with such regularity and predictability in Iraq since the Anbar Awakening in the fall of 2006 it is amazing there are still people out there who don’t understand this has become a fixed pattern of oppression, liberation and revolt – where the Muslim Steet ends up allied with America and the idea of democratic freedom.

More here and here and here on the progress the Iraqi forces are making in standing up and taking control of Iraq’s political destiny. I understand why John McCain is running on the premise we are winning in Iraq. Because we ARE winning in Iraq.