We are continually told how the Iraqi government was beaten and humiliated in Basra after it launched an offensive to clear the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia militias from the city. Yet when the Iraqi Army announced it was going to dismiss the approximately 1,300 soldiers and police who either failed to carry out their duty or openly defected to the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al Sadr pleaded that they be allowed to keep their jobs and even be "rewarded for their loyalty."

In the process of asking for his infiltrators' jobs back--men who disobeyed their chain of command and either deserted or fought government forces--Sadr proves that he in fact ordered Iraqi soldiers and police to turn on their government. Sadr said these men "were only obeying their grand religious leaders" and "were driven by their religious duties."

Sadr clearly believes a soldier's loyalties should be to his militia, party, and cleric first, and the state second. The Iraqi military and government should squash this mindset immediately, and prosecute those who defected or abandoned their posts to the fullest extent of the law. The officers specifically should be made examples.