You Tell Me

It's hard to overstate how important the Grand Ayatollah Sistani is to Iraq.

Here we have one article that has him sending a personal emissary to the US to suss out precisely what our intentions are, and here we have another article suggesting that he's so disappointed that his followers have been ignoring his pleas for moderation and joining the militias that he's giving up altogether.

I don't think both can be entirely true. I'm sure he's bitterly disappointed. Perhaps he threatened to give up? Perhaps at one point he even said, that's it, I've had it, you people are on your own? But has he really abandoned his people just as things are at their worst -- and most delicate?