Ali Sistani

“I was sleeping in a village near Basra that night ... I saw the villagers grabbing their guns and preparing to rush to Najaf, hundreds of miles away. 'Sistani is under attack,' they told me. That was all they needed to know. The same thing happened all over Iraq.”

“Mr. Bremer, you are an American and I am an Iranian. I suggest we leave it up to the Iraqis to devise their constitution.”