“Several American and Iraqi officials now regard Bremer’s move to close (a tabloid newspaper run by firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr) as a profound miscalculation based on poor intelligence and inaccurate assumptions. Foremost among the errors, the officials said, was the lack of a military strategy to deal with Sadr if he chose to fight back, as he did.

‘We punched a big black bear in the eye and got him angry as hell but had no immediate plan to disable him, so of course he struck back in a very vicious way,’ said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who has been serving as a senior adviser to the U.S.-led occupation authority in Baghdad.” The Washington Post analyzes the Iraqi Intifada, and points the finger.