In fact...

"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." - Vice President Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003.

Your first stop for analysis of the uprising that appears to be erupting is, of course, Juan Cole.

The Coalition decision to provoke a fight with Muqtada al-Sadr's movement only three months before the Coalition Provisional Authority goes out of business has to be seen as a form of gross incompetence in governance. How did the CPA get to the point where it has turned even Iraqi Shiites, who were initially grateful for the removal of Saddam Hussein, against the United States? Where it risks fighting dual Sunni Arab and Shiite insurgencies simultaneously, at a time when US troops are rotating on a massive scale and hoping to downsize their forces in country? At a time when the Spanish, Thai and other contingents are already committed to leaving, and the UN is reluctant to get involved?

One answer is that the Pentagon prevented the State Department from running the CPA. State is the body with experience in international affairs and administration. The civilians in the Department of Defense only know how to blow things up. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith staffed the CPA with Neoconservatives, most of whom had no administrative experience, no Arabic, and no respect for Muslim culture (or knowledge about it). They actively excluded State Department Iraq hands like Tom Warrick. (Only recently have a few experienced State Department Arabists been allowed in to try to begin mopping up the mess.)

Shorter version: The Bush Administration's long-running and well-documented disdain for all things State (including, for example, diplomacy) is reaching its logical conclusion. If the Shi'a continue to openly confront the occupying troops and the inevitable backlash from our incursion into Sunni Fallujah begins, we are well and truly f*cked. We didn't have enough troops on the ground to provide security already, and that was with a relatively calm south. Steve Gilliard gives some perspective on the military implications of what happened in Sadr City.

So which battalion commander should be courtmartialed? Because the idea that US troops could go into freaking Sadr City and get out in one piece is delusional at best. Instead, 31 soldiers got lit up. Or a ratio of nearly one killed for three wounded. Which is a phenomenal rate for a small unit action. That means a company was decimated by Shia militia men.

How can I draw that conclusion? Let's say the average mech company has 120 rifles on any given day. High casualities would be 3 killed and seven wounded. Crippling casualities would be 5 killed and 12 wounded. So what do we have? Seven dead and 24 wounded. A bunch of barely trained militiamen shut down the better part of a batallion today.

A battalion? Well, yeah. Because once you start losing men, you hunker down. Things got so bad, they had to call in air support. When one company started to take casualities, the dustoffs had to reach them. That stops offensive action, especially when you're taking fire from everywhere, which is what had to have happened here.

As best as I can guess, these guys rolled up into Sadr City, observed from the minute they rolled out of their base, got trapped in the streets and it was Mogo 2. Remember 18 died in Mogodishu over 24 hours when heavily outnumbered. Seven died in what seems to be a few hours. Extrapolate the numbers and it is this, not the bridge at Fallujah, which is the second Mogodishu.

What I don't understand is the fact that anyone could order any sized US force into Sadr City. There are at least 2 million people there. If you have 5,000 men with guns, they will outnumber any US force which enters there. Ordering US forces there is no better than sending them to die.

People see all those tanks and Apaches and think US soldiers are invincible. They aren't. They are matched, man for man, by the Iraqis. Many Shia are combat veterans and can handle their weapons. By the standards of a guerilla force, the Iraqis are lavishly equipped. They have automatic weapons, RPG's, light machine guns, all with enough ammo and training.

Tanks and Humvees are nearly useless in the crowded streets of Sadr City. If they unload all their firepower, they will kill civilians by the bushel load. It's a man for man fight and the US got hurt today. And tomorrow will not be any better.

Temperatures in Baghdad will rise into the high 90s next week and tempers along with them.