Speaking to "telling details"

Two brief items relating to the standoff at Najaf indicate the possibility of a dangerous dynamic at work.

On the one side, L. Paul Bremer has claimed

weapons were being stockpiled in mosques, shrines and schools in Najaf and, in a message directed to residents, warned, "The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation."

In what could only be considered a thinly-veiled (very thinly) threat.

Bremer's spokesman, Dan Senor ... noted that in the case of military action, "those places of worship are not protected under the Geneva Convention" if they are used to store weapons.

It's hard to imagine what effect such a remark is intended to have. Certainly it will have none on Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahti Army.

I suppose it could be for US domestic consumption, intended to prepare us for an attack that would damage Shiite holy places while allowing the White House the out of claiming that "only military targets" were struck. Pre-emptive guiltlessness, as it were.

What I'm really worried about is that the statements were meant for Iraqi domestic audiences, setting them up in exactly the way I just suggested so that when the assault comes and the mosques get bombed, the Shiites will just sit silently, saying to themselves "well, they were legitimate targets." It's truly frightening to think the American hierarchy could be so overwhelmingly stupid, but since it seems that the further you get from the forces on the ground around Najaf (whose immediate commanders seem to have at least some grasp of the delicacy of the situation into which they've been thrust and display no hurry to charge in) the less realistic the views seem to be, I don't find it unlikely.

On the other side of the equation, a disturbing statement from Sadr, via the Iraqi Press Monitor for April 27, quoting the paper of al-Mada institution for Media, Culture, and Arts.

Muqtada al-Sadr warned that "hell fire" will be opened on US forces if they implement their threat to kill or arrest him. "The Americans must know that the people will open the hell fire against them if something happened to me," Sadr said. ... Sadr reiterated his previous threat to use suicide attackers if US forces enter Najaf or Karbala.

What's dangerous about this? Previously, Sadr has said there would be terrible sorts of revenge - specifically, suicide attacks - if US forces attacked the holy cities or if they damaged any of the holy sites. Now, however, he's saying that "hell fire" will result if anything happens to him. It appears he has started to identify "the cause" with his own welfare - that is, if this comment is accurate, he is seeing himself less as an advocate of his cause or even a leader of it than the physical embodiment of it. And that is an inherently dangerous situation because, fully developed, it would mean that any level of death and destruction is tolerable so long as he himself is protected, because the cause lives and dies with him.

I freely admit I'm reaching pretty far here and may be making too much out of too little. (Indeed, a more prosaic explanation suggests itself: Sadr may be feeling the pressure, hemmed in and a little scared, and is trying to threaten the US off. "Touch me and my big brother will whomp you!" That actually fits better with my previous thoughts that he's realized he overplayed his hand.) But it does concern me, because it's hardly an unknown progression from believing in a cause to being a leader of a cause to being a symbol of a cause (the point at which Sadr is now) to believing you are the cause.

Fallujah continues to be bloodier, but I still believe Najaf is much more dangerous to the future of Iraq and the lives of both Iraqis and Americans (and other foreigners).

Footnote: That progression is even something we've seen here, albeit not in an overtly bloody way: There is reason to believe that the why of Watergate was rooted in the conviction of the clique surrounding (and including) Richard Nixon that the "great things" they were doing would be undermined if he didn't get a second term. That lead to a deliberate attempt to undermine the democratic process. The means are more subtle - massive PR secured through a docile media rather than outright criminality - but the same sort of notion in a more extreme form seems to drive the Bushites.