Aggressive diplomacy

Well, the Paris Hilton scion of religious families, Moqtada al-Sadr, is back from his sojourn in Iran.

Nothing to do with Guardian article about Iran's coming summer offensive, of course.

FOUR BANGER Petraeus discusses this in a recent Army Times article:

In an exclusive May 18 interview with Military Times, Petraeus said the involvement of the Iranians is “absolutely nefarious. It is hugely damaging to Iraq. It is fuelling the Shi’a militia side of things and causing enormous problems for Iraq.”

The “secret cells” are “Sadr special ops,” Petraeus said. “But they’re different from JAM,” he added, using the acronym for the Mahdi Army’s Arabic name, Jaysh al-Mahdi.

Further:

Petraeus said he is “mystified” that there is a debate in the U.S. over whether Khamenei knows about the Quds Force’s activities fomenting violence in Iraq.

“He can’t not know,” Petraeus said, noting that Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force, reports directly to Khamenei, not to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. “It’s a massive operation. ... There are all kinds of different elements of the Quds Force that are engaged in it. If he doesn’t know about it, it’s the most out-of-control operation in the world. And if he does know about it, of course, it’s horrific.”

Yesterday, we aggressively, decisively, engaged the Diplomatic Corp of Persian in a broad based meeting of minds. We got rolled.

In other news, President Bush announced, well, something about the murder of civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan. The usual suspects, just a day or so claiming that President Bush DO MORE TO END GENOCIDE AND STUFF (tm) are now arguing that it's either to much or too late. China intends that the spice flow, internationalist intend that the power flow.

My take away from these twin events? Aggressive diplomacy kills. Unless you're wearing a pinstripe suit.