Notice how the accusation of the Americans attacking first is apparently made by a single person, the militant Sheik Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji, who loses no time making massively incitive comments to a congregation. I have seen no other quotes along these lines.

This is interpreted by the article as:

The Americans said their troops were lured into an ambush, but the Shiites maintained that U.S. soldiers opened fire first when they approached radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's headquarters in the Sadr City slum.

The clash late Thursday, which wounded at least seven Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers, drew an angry reaction from Iraq's Shiites.

The impression given by the article is that ALL the Shiites feel this way. There is no evidence of this in the article.

I'd love to be able to expand my own opinions this way...telling a reporter that "socialism sucks," and having it show up in the paper as "Californians think socialism sucks."