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On ABC, the BBC's Paul Wood called it "a bloody day in Basra" with the Sadrist Mahdi Army retaining control "of as many as seven suburbs" against a combined military-police force of 30,000. Wood confusingly called it "the biggest ever unilateral Iraqi military operation" without qualification, although he presumably meant since the collapse of the Baath Party regime in 2003, not "ever."
In Baghdad, CBS' Lara Logan had a different story. She sat down with Adm Gregory Smith of the US military occupation, who told her that it was not Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army that was being challenged by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government: "The militia groups that have turned away from al-Sadr have turned to Iran and depended on them for financing, equipping and the manpower necessary." Logan concluded that the Battle of Basra consisted of proxy fighting: "Neither the United States nor Iran is looking for all-out war right now but they do not seem to mind using Iraq as their battleground."
On NBC, Ned Colt was imprecise about the Basra fighters, calling them merely "Shiite militants." He was in no doubt, however, about the political power struggle between al-Sadr and al-Maliki: in Baghdad's Sadr City, "thousands of al-Sadr supporters demonstrated demanding that the prime minister must go." A curfew has been imposed on the capital city as rockets attacked the diplomatic Green Zone. At the Pentagon, ABC's Jonathan Karl (at the tail of the Wood videostream) reported on worry about a rising tide of violence in Baghdad--up from ten daily incidents to 50--yet was skeptical that al-Sadr had yet entered the fray: "He once again told his followers that he wants a peaceful solution but that could change at any time." The mood at the Pentagon is that "if al-Sadr's ceasefire does not hold, all bets are off."
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