Summary: Dateline October 1, 2011. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 1, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical, anti-American Muslim cleric — whose Mahdi Army militia once fought U.S. occupation forces in Iraq — positioned himself as a big winner in Iraq’s months-long political deadlock when his Sadrist party threw its support behind Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.