Well. it's official..US Forces are now in combat with al Sadr's Mahdi Army

As Iraq continues to be in danger of unraveling, US forces have begun something they should have done a long time ago...engaging in combat with Moqata al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, the major Shiite Militia armed, trained and run by Iran..and the muscle behing Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's Dawa party.

Obviusly, the pro-Iranian Shiite government we allowed to take power in Iraq was not going to do the heavy lifting required to stabilize the country, which would have involved curbing the militias - and going against Iran's interests, which are to keep Iraq in tumoil until America is forced out.

Since the Bush Administration is unable or unwilling to confront Iran directly, takiong out the Shiite militias is the next best thing. Rather than al Qaeda, the Iranian backed Shiite militias are the real source of the horrendous sectarian murders going on in Iraq.

Over thirty jihadis were reported killed in the fighting with US troops today in Diwaniya after a joint Iraqi and U.S. force tried to arrest a local Shiite militia leader....but not without cost. An Abrams fighting vehicle was destroyed today by multiple RPG rounds, and there has been an upswing in American casualties. Figures released by the Pentagon show that 776 soldiers were wounded in action in Iraq last month, the highest level since the assault on Falluja in November of 2004.

Twenty-seven Americans have been killed in the past week.

Since the Abrams is pretty much immune to the typical roadside IED's used by Iraq's militias, it's pretty obvious that more sophisticated devices are being smuggled from Iran.

According to US officials, these types of armor piercing RPG's are exclusively Iranian and only found in the possession of Shiite militias.

The fighting has occurred in what's described as `exploratory forays' into districts in Baghdad near the Shiite militia bastion of Sadr City, but the Iraqi government has yet to approve full-scale entry ito al Sadr's stronghold. I have a feeling that won't happen, for obvious reasons.

The security situation in Baghdad is increasingly tenuous.

Today, a senior officer in the Iraqi police internal affairs department,Colonel Tamer Salman, was shot dead in what could best be described as a gangland style hit, just five days after an entire police brigade was dismissed for colluding with the Shiite death squads in the Mahdi Aramy and the Badr Force.

And in a pushback for yesterday's raid, Mahdi Army forces attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad's Sadr City on today, kidnapping 11 Iraqi soldiers, according to Iraq's interior Ministry.

Dozens of dead Iraqis turn up on Baghdad's streets every day. U.S. troops have been drawn into the capital away from control of outlying areas to improve security because the Iraqis cannot trust their own police force, recruited and trained by the coalition at such a huge cost.

I think it's pretty fair to say that U.S. post war strategy has failed at this point, something that was obvious to me a long time ago..

And apparently, there are a lot of influential people in Washington who are belatedly coming to the same conclusion.

"The Next 60 to 90 days are critical," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee who just got back from Iraq. "If these movements do not bring about reduction in killings … we got to make some bold decisions in our country."