Sadr and the Surge

The tragedy of the day in Iraq was a female suicide bomber at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. She killed forty students.

The NYTimes combines this story with a report that Moqtada al-Sadr is rejecting the idea of the surge. While his message is veiled, it may be accompanied by more explicit instructions to his underlings. If so, we may get opposition to the surge - which, in the long run, is probably to America's benefit, since we need to defeat the enemy's army, and it's a notoriously amorphous entity. If Sadr's Mahdi Army comes out to fight, U.S. and Iraqi troops could actually have a worthwhile battle - and possibly show to Iraqi Sunnis that we are indeed committed to defending Iraq from Shiite militias as much as from Sunnis.

The side story here is the NYTimes' decision to play these stories as one. It's hard to separate the bombing from the Sadrists after reading the news story, but as far as I know there's no actual connection between them. This suicide bomber (what's she going to do with 72 virgins?) was almost certainly Sunni.