http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/21/battle-for-sadr-city

Out of view of the U.S. media, American forces have been continuing an escalation in violence in Iraq that is claiming more lives.

Fighting that broke out first in Basra in southern Iraq in April, between the Mahdi Army of Shia cleric Moktada al-Sadr and the Iraqi government backed up by U.S. forces, has spread elsewhere around the country--in particular, to the massive Sadr City neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Michael Schwartz is the author of a forthcoming book War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context, to be published later this year by Haymarket Books. He talked to Eric Ruder about how to make sense of the current situation in Iraq.