The Post's Ellen Knickmeyer snagged a chilling interview with Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the turban-wearing cleric who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Hakim, of course, is the radical-right, Iran-linked SCIRI chieftain who headed the group's feared Badr Brigade, a paramilitary force of 20,000 commandos armed and trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. He usually disguises his radicalism and commitment to a Shiite theocracy with polite rhetoric, but in the Post interview a lot of his real colors shine through.

Hakim castigates the United States for tying the hands of the Shiite alliance, and he makes it clear (without being explicit) that left to their own devices the Shiites' crusade against the Sunnis and the Iraqi resistance would be brutal and bloody. "There are plans to confront terrorists, approved by security agencies, but the Americans reject that," says Hakim. The Americans reject confronting terrorists? While thousands of U.S. troops raid city after city in Iraq, killing hundreds? What Hakim, the Shiite fanatic means, is that the United States has so far rejected making a one-to-one equation that every Sunni is a terrorist. Adds Knickmeyer:

Hakim gave few details of what getting tough would entail, other than making clear it would require more weapons, with more firepower, than the United States is currently supplying. He also urged the United States to take a tougher stand against countries harboring insurgents and their supporters, and called for faster trials of insurgent suspects.

His repeated assertion that the United States was being too weak against Iraq's insurgency, allowing attacks to mushroom, appeared to suggest that any future Iraqi government that included him would share his view.

And listen to this: "The ministries of Interior and Defense want to carry out some operations to clean out some areas," says Hakim. "There were plans that should have been implemented months ago, but American officials and forces rejected them." What Hakim is saying, when he says "clean out some areas" sounds very close to "ethinic cleansing, I'd say.

The important lesson of the Hakim interview is that the United States has virtually no common interest with the Hakim-led Shiite alliance. The American interest in Iraq is to allow the Sunnis (including the resistance) back into a position of political equality in Iraq, so the insurgency ends. The Shiite-Hakim interest is to exclude the Sunnis and kill all who object. As Knickmeyer concludes: "Tthe leaders of many Shiite religious parties, reflecting their years in exile and their bitterness over the killing of relatives and supporters during Hussein's dictatorship, say the endgame is a military one."