How silly do we think the Shi'a are?
What's happened as we reach Day 8? Reinforcements are being despatched because there are too few boots on the ground. There has been no cakewalk. No explosion of joy. No cheering crowds. No quick victory. The assumptions behind this war plan have failed utterly. Game show videos at the Pentagon do not conceal the failure of these assumptions.

Southern Iraq, where the Shi'a majority should make the regime's support weakest, has seen some of the fiercest fighting.

Much has been made of the failure to support the Shi'a revolt in 1991. I guess it was inevitable that someone would try to explain it away. William Saletan's Slate article Shia Folly says the Shi'a were not betrayed in 1991 when the coalition failed to support their revolt against Saddam.

In view of that understanding, Bush had no business promising to send troops into Iraq to assist a Shiite uprising. And in fact, he didn't. Three weeks into the war, Bush observed, "There's another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, and then comply with the United Nations resolutions." That was a fact and a suggestion, no less true or wise than an equivalent remark about the Cuban or Serbian people. But it wasn't a promise. We couldn't promise the Shiites we would enter Iraq, since we had already promised our coalition partners we wouldn't. (boldface mine)

Okay, so there was no implicit or explicit promise to the Shi'a in 1991 and they should read the small print next time. Next time is now and the small print has been posted all over the Western media. They've read the small print and they do not want Baghdad as a stepping stone to Tehran or Mecca.

Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, on 25 February said

(:Translated): The Iraqi people will surely resist this idea. I believe that the Iraqi people and the popular and national forces inside Iraq will not accept a military governor, because this is a violation of democracy.

I do not know if the ayatollah has read any of the psyops leaflets but clearly he has read the small print. Dropping millions of leaflets is not going to persuade the Shi'a or any other Iraqis to subject themselves to a US viceroy sipping coffee in his palace while happy native subjects polish his shoes - like a scene from a bad movie. And whichever military genius laid out the line of advance on Baghdad might have taken account that Najaf and Kerbala are holy cities with a status (for Shi'a) equal to Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.

The political assumptions behind this war are wrong. Saletan should rename his article: 'Neocon Folly'.