For the latest in Najaf and other places in Iraq — including a warning to wait until information becomes available before jumping to conclusions — Belmont Club is this morning's required reading.

IT GOES ON: News reports are chortling about roughly two hundredths of one percent of Iraq's population in arms over the Allied-Iraqi offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr and his armed gangs. Facts emerging from other reports, however, indicate that regardless of what ratched-down tactics used by joint forces, "80 percent" of Najaf is free of Mahdi thugs, Allied casualties have been extremely low while enemy loss of life high, and the Imam Ali Shrine remains surrounded.

NO NEGOTIATIONS, EXCEPT FOR NEGOTIATIONS: Diminishing al-Sadr in May succeeded in demonstrating that mainstream Iraqis had no interest in his violent mayhem. With the threat of civil war nonexistent, the Mahdi gangs simply represent a threat to the Iraqi government. So why the resuscitation? Zeyad is not happy, and hardly the only one. The only benefit I can see — very typically, too — is that it works into a strategy about which I read this morning: the Bush administration has decided to keep al-Sadr in a box but refrain from killing him, recognizing that an equally opportunistic twerp will take the phony cleric's place. Instead the Allies will concentrate on the source of destabilization. And that source is Iran. I would prefer to see Najaf free of Iranian-backed thugs today. But those who see the larger picture may be planning differently because of it.