Muqtada al-Sadr's thugs may be enjoying face-time in the Western media but reports suggest that exhiliration will be short-lived. From Reuters:

"Iraqi and U.S. forces are making final preparations as we get ready to finish this fight that the Moqtada (al-Sadr) militia started, " Col. Anthony M. Haslam, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Najaf, said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The desired end state is one of stability and security, where the citizens of Najaf do not live in fear of violence or kidnappings, and where the city of Najaf can once again return to peace and prosperity," the statement quoted the officer as saying.

Some observers are declaring the May settlement with al-Sadr, made after over a thousand of his gang lay dead, a failure in light of renewed activity in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, Najaf and some selected locales in the south of Iraq. Fears in April and May, however, focused on a popular response to al-Sadr's insurrection that would transformit from an armed band of street urchin and foreign terrorists into an uprising, convicting the Allied effort in democratizing Iraq's society of abject failure. That uprising did not happen. Quite the contrary, Iraq's people — from the humble to the religious to the political — stood against Muqtada al-Sadr and the world witnessed how even an infant democratic society could shame a villain into hiding. Iraqis won a cultural victory alongside the American military one; indeed, from the sound of them recently, their frustration is directed at al-Sadr's brazen, if suicidal, defiance. The matter of whether Iraqis wanted to be gun-toting savages or not has been decided — they do not. The question now is how long they will tolerate the hand of tyrants in their own affairs. If Iraq's democratic bloggers are any indication of the public mood and the military's inclination to follow accordingly, al-Sadr is a dead man.

READ, NOW: Via Glenn Reynolds, a masterful confirmation of the news reports above. Find out what the Mahdi scum-of-the-earth have been up to — and to which carnal, superheated, pitchfork-populated locale many of them will soon be sent First Class.

SIGNS: Craig Brett looks back at the Ayatollah al-Sistani's unlikely trip to London as the key to the Allies' seriousness in removing Muqtada al-Sadr.