The left-handed over-optimist

- What kind of hand shaking it was? Allawi was shaking hands with Congressmen with his left hand and the face of a huge baby. His right hand was free by the way. Maybe he has watched Khamenei too much.

- Tony Soprano's of Iraq is repeating the same things Bush says about Iraq. Everything is fine, no matter what -- until mid-November.

- I loved those noises he made while speaking. Sort of mid-eastern coughs. (What they are exactly called?)

- Did you see he credited himself to resolve the Najaf crisis, as if Ayatollah Sistani was a carrot!

- I have a feeling that Sistani knows that the re-elected Bush is harmful for the whole region and he would eventually mobilize Iraqi people against Bush.

By the way, Sistani is not nearly radical as Khomeini when it comes to politics. People who fear he build a Iran style theocracy do not know their fundamentally different political theories. Sistani comes from the mainstream of Shia school who have always been against Khomeini's theory of Ruling Clerics (Vilayat-e Faqih). In this sense, Khomeini was seen as a total rebel among the majority of grand ayatollahs and other top clerics.