The truth is that the Maliki government and its allied Shiite faction, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, formerly known as SCIRI), are much closer to Iran than the Sadrists are. Maliki's campaign against Sadr isn't a noble crusade by the good Iraqi government against the bad Iranian-backed Sadrists, but a battle waged by a weak Shiite leader backed by one militia, ISCI's Badr Corps, against another, stronger Shiite leader, Sadr, with his own militia, the Mahdi Army. Not only that, the "good" militia, the Badr Corps, was created in Iran by Iran's Revolutionary Guard -- the same organization whose Quds Force the United States notoriously declared to be a "terrorist organization" last year. The maraschino cherry on this sundae of absurdity: It was the head of that Quds Force, an Iranian general, who bailed out Maliki after Maliki's assault on Basra ignominiously failed, forcing him to send officials to Iran to broker a truce.

As Juan Cole, a regular Salon contributor, told me, "The Americans are doing propaganda." I called Cole, a nationally recognized expert on Shiite Islam, because I wanted to get a reality check not just on Petraeus and Crocker's expected Iran-is-to-blame spin, but to hear what Cole thinks the United States should do to extricate itself from Iraq. As it turns out, the two questions are inseparable. Cole makes a disturbing case that the Bush administration's hard-line position on Iran and Sadr could end up wrecking our chances of getting out of Iraq without leaving chaos in our wake.