Why Isn’t Anyone Giving Obama Credit for Ousting Maliki?

... the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. But even without America’s prodding, some important Shiites in Iraq had already publicly noted Maliki was part of the problem, not part of the solution. The cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose family had a long history of resistance in Iraq, going back at least to his great-grandfather who led a revolt against the British after WWI, and through the Saddam era, when Sadr’s father organized against Saddam and was assassinated in 1999, most likely by Saddam’s regime, had risen ...