Today's Reality-Based News

Good morning/evening, and welcome to today's Reality-based news from Iraq.

A new poll shows that
religious leaders are the most popular politicians in Iraq and would win a vote if it were held today. More than 45 percent of Iraqis also believe that their country is heading in the wrong direction, while one out of three Iraqis blames the U.S.-led multinational force for Iraq's security problems, slightly more than the 32 percent who blame foreign terrorists (and because this is reality-based news, I am compelled to remind you that there were no foreign terrorists in Iraq before the US invasion, whatever other Bizarro World news services may say).

85 percent of Iraqis want to vote in the January election. The most popular politician is Abdel Aziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). US puppet Iyad Allawi had the greatest name recognition of any politician, with 47 percent of Iraqis supporting him for a seat in the new parliament. But Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr came in a very close third, with 46 percent backing him for an assembly seat.

For his comments on this, we now cross to our correspondent Salam Pax in Washington:

I am surprised at how much everyone here seems to have bought what the Bush administration has been selling them - especially the line about a well-educated Iraqi middle class that will take over and transform Iraq into a democratic paradise.

To tell you the truth, I bought into that as well - and boy were we wrong. That educated middle class was everywhere around the world, but not in Iraq. What it decided to do was to shut its mouth or turn religious.

And that is another thing that seemed to be incomprehensible to one of my new Washington friends: when we were talking about the popularity of the clerical militia chief Moqtada al-Sadr I was asked how anyone could be fooled by someone who so obviously used religion to boost his own popularity and went for the lowest common denominator for popular appeal? I was saved by another guest who asked if we were talking about Bush or Sadr here.

Thank you, Salam.

The US administration in Iraq is now actively seeking to reduce the popularity of the Muslim clerics... by arresting them (run Reuters footage):

Sheikh Abdel-Sattar Abdel-Jabbar, his two sons and a neighbor were arrested in a raid on the mosque compound where they live in the Tunis area of Baghdad around 1:30 a.m., association officials said.

"This arrest is part of a campaign not just against the Muslim Clerics' Association but all opposition voices," spokesman Mohamed Bashar al-Faidhi told Reuters.

The officials said they did not know why Abdel-Jabbar was detained. Witnesses said hundreds protested for his release after noon prayers outside the Najib mosque where he preached.

The U.S. military said it had no reports of any Iraqi cleric being arrested in Baghdad.

And now for the weather. It's still raining bombs in Falluja, where another 8 people were killed. Elseshere, conditions remain hot and dry and dangerous. More later.