I haven't found Juan Cole to be particularly partisan, though I haven't been reading him long. So what follows is not, as far as I can tell, lefty raving. Instead, it's, well, informed commentary about the reality of what's happening.

But major fighting in most Shiiite urban areas is unambiguous in its significance. It means that the Bush administration rule of Iraq is FUBAR. It seems inevitable to me that the US military will pursue a war to the death with the Army of the Mahdi, the Sadrist movement, and Muqtada al-Sadr himself. They will of course win this struggle on the surface and in the short term, because of their massive firepower. But the Sadrists will simply go underground and mount a longterm guerrilla insurgency similar to that in the Sunni areas.

The United States has managed to create a failed state, similar to Somalia and Haiti, in Iraq.

...and don't be surprised to see stuff like this happen:

The Mahdi Army kidnapped and held 2 South Korean human rights workers from Sunday through Tuesday, but Korean authorities said they had been released. (This development reminds one of the terrible "hostage crisis" in Lebanon during the 1980s, and may be yet another tactic in the quiver of the Sadrists).