While it is useful for Bush's opponents to use phrases like "The Shiites are upset" or "The Shiites are protesting," it should be remembered by the rest of us that there are about 11 million Shiites in Iraq, and a single leader fielded 30,000 of them in a protest.

It is also worth remembering that in surveys, most Shiites support the idea of democracy, and 66 percent would not like to see an Islamic government.

One radical with his followers is not the population of Iraq. Keep it in perspective.

The media and others made a career last year of inflating the pre-war protests in America to make it sound like the entire population of the U.S. was in the streets. They are doing the same thing now, and for the same reasons.

When anti-terror protesters were in the streets of Iraq, the media dismissed it, saying there weren't that many of them. Why is this different?