It has begun:

Thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers launched a major assault Thursday on militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in Najaf, with explosions and gunfire echoing around the holy city's revered Imam Ali shrine and its vast cemetery.

..."Major operations to destroy the militia have begun," said U.S. Marine Maj. David Holahan, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment. He said thousands of U.S. troops were taking part.

Action is taking place in Kufa, as well. The Imam Ali and Kufa Mosques will not be targeted, but rather surrounded. Pay attention to Central Command; the Western media will likely continue to plod through its misconceptions. Zeyad, thankfully, dispels some of the Western myths surrounding Shiite order. Is it too much to suggest that people who tolerate the use of their shrine as a command center and weapons depot for men who intimidate, kidnap, torture and kill the local population — and yet would be "enraged" if its threshold were crossed by troops come to free the population of fear — are phony Muslims?

Let's look forward to total victory. Remember: this is the final stage of a proxy war against Iran, by whom Muqtada al-Sadr's street thugs and foreign fighters are bought and paid for. Iraqis want al-Sadr out — for their new lives to truly begin.

GOOD NEWS, BAD REPORTING: I meant what I said about sticking to Central Command. I've already found one Canadian report completely misinterpreting of the Marines' and Iraqis' intention to avoid the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf, calling it a "halt of operations." Sorry, no. Centcom chastised agencies for incorrectly reporting a mass exodus from Najaf when there has been none, and added information that most journalists have missed: Mahdi thugs are firing at whatever moves from inside Imam Ali, including innocent Iraqis. So much for popularity. A Reuters report threw up a slightly misleading headline, all based on the accounts of "witnesses." Finally, the "Arab street" spectre is in full illumination, a return of the turnip ghost we haven't seen since major military operations in March and April of 2003. As I said above: anyone who accepts outlaws and Islamists terrorizing neighborhoods, making a fuss only when they're brought to justice, is a brittle hypocrite. Or a Near Easterner whose totalitarian government is doing the talking for him.

Can we agree that combat operations are going to be inherently confusing, and that initial appearances will be deceptive if taken out of the larger context of operations? Most press agencies won't, and that is pathetic. The trick is to find reports with the least amount of editorial-weeding necessary: the Washington Times, Telegraph and John Burns of the New York Times should be passable.

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.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club is invaluable this morning, tying half a dozen news narratives into a single, resoundingly positive evaluation of the war. He also comes close to predicting an autumn foreign policy debate strikingly similar to the one sealing Saddam Hussein's fate in 2002 — a discussion for which President Bush's opponents in the Democratic Party were utterly unprepared and unwilling, providing an upset midterm victory for the Republicans. Wretchard also comments on the downward spiral of leftism. In writing he references John Burns, a reporter whose New York Times work I excerpted three days ago for a perspective on the Khomeinist-backed insurgency's slow annihilation. In that same entry, I noted another news report quoting Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as inviting Muqtada al-Sadr to participate in the country's January elections. "Is it an 'olive branch' as described — or a polite ultimatum?" I asked. According to some sources of Burns', it may have been a subtle but necessary political gobo:

[S]ome American military officers have said that this presentation of the situation was a convenient fiction, propagated by the Allawi government and the American command to allow their forces to hunt down as many of Mr. Sadr's fighters as possible while exempting Mr. Sadr from any deliberate attack.

Burns reports that American troops were given explicit permission to battle in the ancient Najaf cemetary, a site defiled by the extremists who claim protection under its inviolability; and may finally clear out the hypocritically forbidden Imam Ali Shrine, a place that, like the cemetary, is described as off-limits to non-Muslims in American uniforms but acceptable to non-Muslims in black, jihad jumpsuits who claim to be on the side of God.

Retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney reiterated last night on Special Report with Brit Hume that the southern violence was guided by the hand of Iran, Muqtada al-Sadr the Tehran mullahs' patsy. It's hardly conjecture that if al-Sadr were put down, his former employers would find another ambitious thug to command native criminals and foreign terrorists: gangs in the south are a proxy to our dedicated enemy in the war on terror, Iran. As written here nearly a year ago and maintained by scholar Michael Ledeen since the beginning of time, "The security of Iraq and Afghanistan depends largely on disrupting the ability of hostile neighbors to send men, money or equipment for destabilization efforts." Iraq is a perfect reflection of the war against authoritarians, a free society beset by the very enemies America must face and defeat — al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Syrian and Iranian governments — before victory can be claimed.

Thankfully, Belmont Club has good news on that, too. (Note how the leftist Guardian bristles at the thought of wrecking a totalitarian regime.)

IRAN, NOT SO FAR AWAY: Iraqi Interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan again accuses Iran of inciting violence, the invasion of cowards.

IRAQIS, ENEMIES OF TERRORISM: Muqtada al-Sadr? Regular Iraqis hate the man's guts. And they want his little rebellion-in-a-box shut down. Omar has more.

Awake but in a nightmare: Omar tells a story of Saddam's clockwork Stalinist regime and why a few dozen were unlucky enough to share the name of a wanted man. Against this, remember that voices on the left are working to tell us that foreign oppression is trivial and even imaginary.

Ays at Iraq at a Glance:

I feel so relaxed and glad when I express my thoughts and ideas, I said that it’s wrong to sign the amnesty law! And no one [will] execute me! Freedom and democracy is cool!

And it's yours to keep, Ays. Iraq and the United States won't abandon you.

Iraqi blogger Omar is indispensible to our support and understanding of Iraq's democratization; we know that. It looks as though a local Iraqi newspaper, the New Sabah, has recognized the talent of Omar and his brothers, too, and recently published a weblog post of his as a news story. Congratulations, Omar: Iraqis need to hear your voice.

Omar picks up on the mischief of al-Sadr's gangs where Zeyad left off yesterday, offering this striking anecdote (emphasis mine):

[Interim Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi seemed so determined in this conference and when one reporter asked him, "Why do you maintain the pressure and continue to push things to the extreme against Iraqi citizens?" He answered the reporter with a harsh tone, "What citizens? These are outlaws and no one is allowed to break the law here no matter who he was" and he added, "We will continue to push harder and we will keep the course against these criminals." Then the reporter tried to interrupt him but Allawi said, "Enough. We are not having a conversation here. You asked a very unacceptable question and I answered you."

True enough. The men in Iraq, native or foreign, taking up arms against freedom are terrorists, criminals, outlaws: nothing else.

DENOUEMENT?:According to the New York Times, American and Iraqi troops are not letting up:

American marines drove deeper into the heart of the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday as they fought Moktada al-Sadr's rebel militiamen, and there was little sign that American commanders, who said they were taking orders from the new Iraqi government, intended to heed appeals for a cease-fire from clerics and others claiming to represent Mr. Sadr.

In three days of fighting, including mostly sporadic battles on Saturday, the marines and supporting units from the new American-trained Iraqi security forces have pushed well into the old city, an area the Americans had avoided in their months of on-and-off fighting with the Mahdi Army, Mr. Sadr's black-uniformed militia.

In May, the Mahdi gang's hamstrings were cut. Now its throat?

SURPRISE: According to at least two Pacific news sources (here and here), Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has invited Muqtada al-Sadr to run in Iraq's elections. Is it an "olive branch" as described — or a polite ultimatum? An American commander is quoted as saying "all bets are off" with al-Sadr so at this point it's anyone's guess. There's also Allawi's reference to the shredded mobs in Najaf to consider:

What has been happening in Najaf in the past 48 hours involves elements backed by some media outlets that are trying to hinder our progress and disrupt the normal functioning of the Government.

How much does that statement have to do with the Iraqi government's recent 30-day closing of this media outlet?

THE BRAVE: From one of our soldiers facing al-Sadr's thugs in Baghdad:

U.S. Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Calvary Division that is responsible for security in Sadr City, said militants never had full control over the large Shiite slum during the clashes.

"We have seen nowhere near the violence of April," Chiarelli said, referring to a Sadr-led uprising in April and May that killed hundreds.

Chiarelli said all U.S. operations in Sadr City were being conducted jointly with Iraqi security forces.

"We take no action unless we are fired upon," he said. "I can cite you example after example where we did not engage when forces fired upon us because to do so would have caused civilian casualties. I might add our enemy does not do the same."

Point taken.

Iraqi bloggers respond to the faltering, pointless al-Sadr offensive. Zeyad is thinking like I am — that al-Sadr's lust for strife will destroy him, and that this is quite possibly the end of the line. Ays of Iraq at a Glance dismisses al-Sadr as a foreign-fed kid, equally patient for Iraqi authorities to destroy the Mahdi gang. Sam at Hammorabi examines al-Sadr's ties to Tehran's Khomeinists, neatly slicing the Western misconception that "Iraqis" are simply firing RPGs around because they want central air. He also offers a prayer for the recovery of Ayatollah al-Sistani. The demand to kill or incarcerate al-Sadr seems to be a popular one, with Baghdadi of Iraqi American appealing to Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to end the farce.

Finally: a touching post by Ahmed of Life in Baghdad for the Christians murdered in Baghdad, one that speaks of Iraq's pluralist future.

SALAAM: Alaa of the Mesopotamian gives us some classicist outrage — and the apparently unreported observation of tribesmen working to defeat armed thugs in the south.

In May we watched as Iranian-backed Islamist thug Muqtada al-Sadr sent hundreds of his widely disliked thugs to their deaths against Allied troops while Iraqi Shiites rallied against the diastrous Khomeinist insurrection. In June, a survey of Iraqi opinion taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority exposed al-Sadr as less popular than the manacled, defeated Saddam Hussein. Kept alive by a CPA and Iraqi interim government that demurred on their promise to drag him off to a murder trial, al-Sadr has bided his time, with only the occasional paranoid outburst.

Armed men reportedly loyal to the man most Iraqis consider a criminal have attacked Allied and Iraqi troops over the past two days, with painfully familiar results:

U.S. marines have killed an estimated 300 fighters loyal to a firebrand Iraqi Shi'ite cleric in fierce clashes around the holy city of Najaf in the past two days, a senior U.S. officer said on Friday.

In addition to a confirmation of the obvious — foreign Islamists are mixing in with street vermin — there is also more evidence that, as I've noted before, the lines between terrorist insurgency and gangster mayhem are blurring:

U.S. officials said there were indications foreign fighters had joined the Mehdi militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf. Criminal gangs were also involved, they said.

Al-Sadr has apparently offered another olive branch; one that, judging by his language, he intends to swing at the Iraqi government if they don't let him off the hook again. True enough, Muqtada al-Sadr is as strategically feckless and politically demolished as he was even days after his April excuse for an "uprising" had begun. But by all accounts, best expressed by blogger Mohammed, Iraqis are as fed up with the persistence of the man and his minions as Americans were with Prohibition Gangland, and no longer care what consequences their leaders fear from simply knocking al-Sadr down:

It’s obvious that the new Iraqi government is not sure that it’s strong enough now to face a military revolt carried by Sadr followers while the coalition seemed always worried of how arresting Muqtada or crushing his persistent tries to disturb peace would affect the religious feelings of the common Iraqi She’at. I just want to say that common She’at in Iraq maybe simple but they are not stupid and they know what a fake this guy is and they know what’s good for them and what’s bad.

...We should put these thugs in their right place; traitors and mercenaries who took the opposite side to the majority of Iraqis, helping Iraq's enemies in spreading chaos while we all try to put our country on the right path to peace and democracy.

It's probable that if the Allies are confident that al-Sadr's death or capture will disperse, rather than invigorate, the rabble, they're contemplating whether to do it themselves or wait for Iraqi forces.

Accusations from the Iraqi interim government against its neighbors' support of terrorists have finally materialized into action. Joint operation "Phantom Linebacker" is underway to deprive Iraq's in-country enemies of support from Syria. Meanwhile, pluralization continues apace with growing ranks of Iraqi women soldiers.

If accurate, this is doubly good news:

A tribal chief in the turbulent city of Fallujah led a raid that freed four Jordanian hostages kidnapped a week ago, the chief said Wednesday, while a militant group promised to free two Turkish truck drivers whose company agreed to pull out from Iraq.

A brother of one of the four Jordanian hostages, Mohammed abu Jaafar, said that he'd spoken by telephone with his brother Ahmad, who told him: "Now I am free. I was in the hands of evil people. Now I am in the hands of good people."

Keeping Omar's cautionary in mind, there's a lot of mischief to be had as terrorism blends and perhaps devolves into petty organized crime. If past experience is any guide, the words of any man of esteem in Fallujah — a long-troubled city — should be taken with skepticism. But if true, the rescue is another victory for Iraqi democrats.