I swear you just can't make this shit up...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers.

Rice, in the Iraqi capital to tout security gains and what she calls an emerging political consensus, said al-Sadr is content to issue threats and edicts from the safety of Iran, where he is studying.

Okay, Sadr is a coward because he's supposedly in Iran, Where's Shrub and Darth issueing their threats and edicts from...?

"I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go too their deaths and he's in Iran."

"Some of the violence is a byproduct of a good decision," to take on militias and consolidate military power, Rice told reporters following a few hours of meetings and lunch with Iraqi leaders.

"That, I think, is what has given the sense to the Iraqis that they have a new opportunity, a window of opportunity," Rice said. "I don't think you would have seen this kind of unity," before.

Uh, It was a good decision and there's unity...! Excuse me...?

With the top U.S. ground commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker looking on, al-Maliki told Rice that security has improved. She nodded agreement. After lunch with President Jalal Talabani, Rice smiled as the Kurd told her Iraq is enjoying a "political spring." Rice also met with a relatively new decision-making council representing Iraq's major sectarian and ethnic groups.

At the time it seemed "as if the Green Zone itself has been under attack," Rice told employees, but the effort is worthwhile. "It's been a long five years, there's no doubt about it."

How safe was it...?

Warning sirens sounded at least twice while Rice was inside the temporary embassy, housed in a beat-up Saddam-era palace. She did not visit the site of a new fortified U.S. Embassy set to open in a few weeks.

She just can't keep her mouth shut...

Ms. Rice said that she was not sure how to interpret a statement on Saturday by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army fighters have been battling Iraqi and American forces in Sadr City and in the south, that he would declare “war until liberation” if the fighting against his militia forces continued.

“I don’t know whether to take him seriously or not,” Ms. Rice said.

But she said that American and Iraqi forces were not trying to block the Sadrist movement from Iraq’s political process. “I didn’t hear anybody say” that the Sadrists “shouldn’t try again to get the votes of the Iraqi people, as long as they are not armed,” Ms. Rice said.

This encapsulates the whole Alice-in-Wonderland logic...

Earlier this month, Iraq’s national security council issued a statement saying that all political parties must disband their militias if they wished to participate in provincial elections scheduled for October.

Some political analysts have said that what underlies the Iraqi government’s move against the Mahdi Army is a rivalry between two armed Shiite political groups, Mr. Sadr’s and the Badrists, the armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a large Shiite political bloc that supports Mr. Maliki. Many members of the Badr organization joined the government’s security forces early in the Iraq conflict, and they have been battling the Sadr-led forces.

But Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, who joined Ms. Rice at the news conference, drew a distinction between Mr. Sadr’s supporters and the Badr group. “The Badr organization, made the choice a while back that they were going to step away from a militia identity and move into politics,” Mr. Crocker said. “That’s the choice now in front of the Sadr movement.”

Mr. Crocker cast the Iraqi government’s initiative in Basra and Baghdad as “a defining event,” and said it represented “the state asserting itself against those who would attack the state.”

Did ya catch that? The Mehdi Army must disarm to join the political process, meanwhile, the Badr Brigades who are incorporated into the IA are waging war against the Sadrists in the name of the state... What a mess, we need to get out now!

Update: Voices of Iraq reports: "Govt. making up crisis with Sadrists to pass security deal with U.S. – spokesman"

To wit:

"There were parties that signed (the agreement) on behalf of the prime minister (Nouri al-Maliki) and he has to respect this agreement to guarantee citizenship rights for Iraqis in general and the Sadrists in particular," Sheikh Salah al-Ubaydi told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

"The Iraqi government's campaigns against the Sadrist bloc are politically motivated with the aim of making gains from in the forthcoming provincial elections and passing an economic-security deal with the Americans," Ubaydi said.

"If the Iraqi people remained preoccupied, the government could pass this agreement with all its weaknesses that grant the U.S. side privileges at the expense of Iraq," Ubaydi indicated. Sadr had on Saturday threatened "open war" with the government unless it chose what he called the "path of peace". "I'm giving the last warning and the last word to the Iraqi government -- either it comes to its senses and takes the path of peace ... or it will be the same as the previous government," Sadr said, referring to Saddam Hussein's fallen regime but without elaborating. The cleric added: "If they don't come to their senses and curb the infiltrated militias, then we will declare an open war until liberation." Sadr's movement accuses other Shi'ite parties of infiltrating their militias into the Iraqi security forces.