Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand anti-American Shia cleric whose Mahdi Militia has fought the US military almost constantly since the occupation began has up and gone missing.Or at least faded into the background:On March 3 a Kuwaiti news article translated by MEMRI claimed that the notorious Iraqi militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr was in an Iranian hospital, comatose from “food poisoning”. The rumor capped one of the most bizarre political absences in recent recent Iraq history. Sadr was a powerful politician who led the Madhi Army militia in Iraq. His forces had fought the US Marines in Najaf; challenged the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for the leadership of Shi’ism in Iraq; built extensive alliances with the Ayatollahs in Teheran and aspired to create a force the equal of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The Nation’s Naomi Klein even called him “the single greatest threat to U.S. military and economic control of Iraq.” Suddenly, having declared a...(Read Full Post)