Larry Diamond in Newsweek cover article

The profile of Moqtada al-Sadr shows U.S. hesitancy, missteps and confusion in dealing with the radical cleric. Newsweek interviewed Larry Diamond, a senior adviser to Ambassador Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, who traveled extensively in 2004 meeting with Iraqi clerics and community leaders. "I could see how frightened they were of [Sadr] and his Mahdi Army," recalls Diamond. "I was driven past an area, a kind of compound where his black-clad army was training for the upcoming revolution to seize power and take over. It just dawned on me that these people were going to make this place an authoritarian hell of a new sort, Taliban style, and would murder a lot of our allies in the process." Larry Diamond told Bremer the U.S. urgently needed to act against Sadr, Newsweek reports. However, Bremer responded that he was waiting for a new plan from Coalition forces. Read more »