This is going to be short, sweet, and to the point.  I'm going to pull a sentence out of Joe Klein's article at Time.com:

According to soldiers I spoke with in Baghdad, the Mahdi Army has a major presence in the local Iraqi Security Forces, especially the local police, which was precisely the point that the seven enlisted men were making.

Yes, the Mahdi Army does have a presence in the local Iraqi security forces.  Do you know why?  

I'm going to pull another bit from the article at Crooks and Liars referencing Big Noise Films in Iraq:

(W)hen General Petraeus says that they're merely applauding these tribes from the sidelines, he's lying. I mean, while we were embedded with the Americans, we saw American military commanders hand wads of cash to tribal militias. And when he says that they are facilitating their integration into the country's security forces, what he means is they're pressuring Iraq's government to incorporate these militias wholesale into the police forces. In fact, that's one of the promises that these tribes are given, that after working with the Americans for a few months, they'll become Iraqi police, be armed by the Iraqi state and be put on regular payroll. So it's completely disingenuous, what he's saying.

Now, I'm sure many people remember this from 2005:

<span class="caps">WASHINGTON </span&gt(CNN) -- Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

Any six year old can put this together;

• the <span class="caps">U.S. </span&gtgovernment is paying the tribal leaders (of both factions) in Iraq "wads of cash" to "help" the American forces promising them they will become part of the Iraqi Security Forces.

• the <span class="caps">U.S. </span&gtgovernment is pressuring the Iraqi government to incorporate the militia's (from both sides that we paid the "wads of cash") into the Iraqi police/security forces.

• the <span class="caps">U.S. </span&gtgovernment cannot account for the "wads of cash" lost in Iraq.

• the Iraqi Security Forces are partly responsible for the sectarian violence in the form of "death squads".

I can tell you where the lost "wads of cash" (or at least some of it) went; into the merry-go-round that we created with horrifyingly predictable results:

"Evidence suggests that Iraqi security forces are involved in these horrific crimes, and thus far the government has not held them accountable," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division. "The Iraqi government must stop giving protection to security forces responsible for abduction, torture and murder."

The Bush administration has turned Iraq into a clusterf@ck!  We are paying the tribal militia's to <span class="caps">NOT </span&gtattack our forces, promising that we'll help them get into the Iraqi police force, pressuring the Iraqi government to do just that, and then when these militia's get into the Iraqi security forces they use their newly acquired positions to commit sectarian violence which our own government then touts to continue "the surge" of our own troops to fight the very violence we are funding!