I heard an American briefer in Baghdad today claim that US is opposed to the presence of militias in Iraq, and that is why US military is moving against Muqtada As-Sadr. Of course, he meant that the US is opposed to militias in Iraq unless they are aligned with the US (like the two Kurdish militias, and the Badr Brigades militia of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution). How much the US public is lied to. If the US public knows the extent of the deception there would be an uproar, I believe. C. Wright Mills said in 1960s in his book The Power Elite that the ruling class stays in power by a combination of methods: deception, flattery (of the masses), and entertainment. Marx (in fact it could have been Balzac before him) thought that religion is the opium of the masses. He should have added sports, pornography, wrestling, and reality TV to the mix.