About 2,000 people set up camp outside the oil ministry to protest against lines to purchase fuel that have taken days, black market fuel prices that can run higher than in the U.S., and life with no heating kerosene during the coldest part of the year.

The protest was organized by one of Iraq's most populist politicians, the rebel Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led an armed uprising against U.S. troops last year.

NEOCONS LOOKING TOWARD REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN

"Having adopted legislation in the past aimed at Cuba and Iraq, similar groups of Republicans and Democrats in Congress are currently setting their sights on promoting 'regime change' in Iran," the Financial Times reports.

"As a result, new exiled Iranian opposition groups backed by some of Washington's neoconservatives are springing up in the hope of seeing large doses of U.S. funding."

In "Iran: Déjà Vu All Over Again," Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies, writes: "The bottom line, however, is that Iran, like Iraq, is not a direct military threat to the United States, even if it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist groups Iran supports are anti-Israeli and do not currently target the United States. And the allegations of linkages to al Qaeda are as tenuous as the claims made about Iraq. ... It would be folly for the United States to wage another war against another Muslim nation after Afghanistan and Iraq."

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