THANKS, MOOK:

Chasing the Mahdi Army through Baghdad's hall of mirrors (Joseph Krauss, 7/26/07, AFP)

On a searing summer afternoon the streets of the Al-Hurriya neighbourhood in western Baghdad are bustling, the shops are open, the people are smiling and chatting and lounging outside in the shade.

Ask anyone and they will tell you there is complete security in their corner of central Baghdad -- no militias, no insurgents, no worries.

But no one calls this a victory for the five-month-old Baghdad security plan, and the US soldiers who police Al-Hurriya are convinced that most of its people are in the grip, or on the payroll, of a shadowy militia.

"The reason they say it's safe is that all the Sunnis they worry about -- neighbours they lived with for generations -- are dead," Lieutenant William Cone of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne said.

If the security of the Shi'a majority depends on whacking irreconcilable Sunni, then that's what ought to happen.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 27, 2007 7:02 AM