Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the Independent and author of Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq, discusses the past, present, future and importance of the Sadrist movement in Iraq, America’s employment of “al Qaeda in Iraq,” and the disaster of the occupation.

MP3 here. (42:09)

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, has been visiting Iraq since 1978. He was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting in recognition of his writing on Iraq. He is the author of, his memoir, The Broken Boy (Jonathan Cape, 2005), and with Andrew Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (Verso, 2000), The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq (Verso, 2006) and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq.