While more than a few news agencies — including Fox — reported yesterday afternoon that both Allied troops and al-Sadr's gangs had "left Karbala," as if Sheriff shot into the air to disperse the ornery cowpokes, Craig Brett found reports that now seem to be prevailing, those of an Allied victory:

U.S. commanders said early today that insurgents loyal to a rebel cleric appeared to have given up control of central Karbala, where they had been shielding themselves at two shrines. ...A large overnight raid met no resistance coming from a group of buildings where insurgents had been firing at U.S. tanks with rocket-propelled grenades. Civilians were seen returning to homes in central Karbala that they had abandoned during the fierce fighting. And Saturday afternoon, tribal sheiks approached U.S. commanders offering to persuade the militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay down its arms and leave the city.

During the raid early today, Iraqis at a nearby teahouse told soldiers that busloads of fighters from Fallujah who came to town last week left Friday. The fighters fled after concluding that they could not stand up to U.S. tanks, these Iraqis said.

Emphasis mine. Muscle bused in from Fallujah? That city is Sunni, and reports indicated Syrian and other foreign fighters among the insurgents there. What of the sempiternal divide between Sunni and Shiite? For the caliber of lowlife with which Allied forces have battled since April, simply the joy of carnage and the prospect of dominating the innocent and weak could be enough for ecumenism — not that these killers' dirty work conforms to any religion in the first place. It's just another reminder that neither piety nor ideal has anything to do with the attempt to undo Iraq's democratization — or the superficially complex nature of Near East authoritarianism. A thug who can wax eloquent is still a thug.

For Muqtada al-Sadr, whose insurrection was judged a long shot over a month ago, the end may be near:

U.S. commanders said they would press the Iraqi police to do patrols in the old city this week. Whether and how the police get attacked will determine how much is left of the insurgency, the commanders said. If the insurgency in Karbala has truly dissipated, then al-Sadr's six-week insurrection has suffered badly.

And if it has truly dissipated, al-Sadr's forces are left with Najaf and Kufa but publicly unwanted in first place and under withering Allied attacks in the second.

FROM THE IRAQIS: Zeyad has posted a statement from leading Shiite clerics in Karbala and Najaf chastising Muqtada al-Sadr and repudiating his supporters in Iraq and beyond.