Various bloggers are cheering yesterday’s ABC News report that radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the guy who rocks the body that rocks the Mahdi Army, has fled Iraq for Iran. Obviously, we can’t know what’s really going on, but this sounds incredible fishy. Consider some of Captain Ed’s reasons for cheering:

This couldn’t have come at a better time. Congress has tied itself in knots trying to opine on what a disaster the surge will be, and before they can vote on a resolution scolding George Bush for wasting resources, he’s already chased one of the worst actors out of Baghdad. [….] And as for Sadr, this will destroy him and his Mahdi Army. ABC reports that Sadr wants to try to run the Mahdis from Teheran, but his credibility as a jihadi just tanked. [….] And the Iranians surely have to be thumping their foreheads over his bug-out.

Yes, well, exactly. Nothing about this makes much sense. Iran doesn’t have a whole lot of reason to want him there. It’s hard to imagine that there was nowhere in Iraq Sadr could flee to if he really felt he was in danger, or that he wouldn’t prefer to do so given the hit his cred takes if he leaves the country. And the theory that he turned tail when the “surge” plan was announced is hard to credit also: If, per the ABC report, “He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house,” then the addition of more ground troops seems like a strange trigger, especially given that those troops are necessarily going to be focused in a few specific areas. And I hope I’m not too much of a cynic if I find it awfully convenient that, while he purportedly fled weeks ago, this is leaking just as Congress begins to debate a resolution condemning the surge. Juan Cole appears to have similar thoughts.