Wires are reporting Muqtada al-Sadr's gangs having the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf. Have combined efforts in winnowing out armed street thugs effectively damaged the Mahdi's ability to terrorize? Will the Khomeinist mob simply melt away for another crack at disrupting Iraqi lives? We'll see. More later.

AS IT GOES: According to Reuters, the situation is yet undetermined. One is expected to trust Iraqi military sources over Muqtada's lackeys but if our Marines don't know details on the ground, especially in this episode, neither do we. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Air Force is now in full, if modest operation. Pilots know their orders well:

"Before our mission was very combative to other countries and threatening to other countries," [Iraqi Col. Abed] said. "Now our mission is to serve our country. We want to prove that the coalition is not an invading force, but a force that gave us our independence. And we want to protect that. This is a new mission for us."

Is there a chance that the red-light-green-light operations we've now come to expect from Baghdad and Washington are intended to stave off strategically consequential actions of Khomeinist or Ba'athist terrorists until Iraqi police and armed forces are tactically superior, and can finish off the insurgency by themselves? That's a plan I personally disagree with, believing Iraq's vulnerability a responsibility of forces who made it so — necessarily, like a surgeon's deep incision — to leave the country far better than as found. But this could be what's on certain minds.