The correct term, tho it is politically incorrect, is pussy.

As in Mookie is a brave pussie hiding in Iran while his followers lead and bleed in Iraq.

Yep. It's always smart to call your enemy a pussy. Just like it's smart to urge them to bring on an attack. If only we at least learned from our mistakes.

I believe it's called the "flypaper" strategy. It's responsible for the death and capture of a lot of terrorists, by the way. And it's keeping the energies of AQ and affiliated groups away from airplanes and skyscrapers.

Yeah, yeah: I know. If we fight back, we'll only provoke them. So the less we do to defend ourselves, the fewer terrorist attacks there will be. If only the 1990s demonstrated that . . .

Re: the word pussy. I did resist that for a while, since it suggests a rather, um, passive stance that I haven't noticed in . . . well . . . the particular pussy I know best.

But if one thinks of a pussy in its normal state--soft, receptive--that expresses the concept quite nicely of how ineffective some Arab/Persian leadership is these days. Without oil money, a few of these states would be in very sad shape indeed.

Just like it's smart to urge them to bring on an attack.

It is. I suspect that a vast amount of problems we and the Iraqi goverment are dealing with because of al Sadr will come to a sudden halt when someone shoots him. In. The. Head. Personally, I'll settle with a Predator firing a Hellfire missle into his squeekhole, but I digress...

In the mean time, his followers are the ones on the bleeding edge and they are bleeding. Well, maybe. Seems that they're realizing that ISF is serious about laying down the law, and even the New York Times reports that Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has mostly melted away in Basra.

Maybe 'cause the ISF is in the process of turning the Mahdis into blood pudding? Nah, can't be.