A rare bomb attack on a Sunni place of worship leads the daily Iraq reports today, while the Times submits two noteworthy enterprise pieces. With Congress set to resume this week, the Times and Post put Rep. Murtha in the hot seat, with articles pondering the fate of his Iraq proposals.

The Post relays coverage that Iraq's oil law has cleared a major obstacle, but the day’s must read for Iraq watchers has to be Damien Cave’s important profile of Muqtada al-Sadr and his organization in the Times, which ought to dispel some of the myths surrounding the Sadrist Current.

Dozens of Sunni worshipers were killed in a bomb attack on their mosque in Habbaniya yesterday, a bomb was detonated at a checkpoint leading to the al-Hakim compound in Baghdad, and another attack targeted a checkpoint in Baghdad, killing at least eight policemen, according to Richard Oppel of the Times. Oppel also runs down the Saturday developments concerning the arrest of 'Ammar al-Hakim: Hakim held a press conference in Najaf, reiterating his claims of abuse during the detention, the US military released a statement which said that Hakim had not been mistreated, and said that the reason for the detention was that Hakim’s convoy “displayed suspicious activities” in a sensitive border area. The US had earlier said that Hakim was detained because of an expired passport. President Jalal Talabani issued a statement condemning the detention.

Both the Times story and Ernesto Londoño’s article in the Post point out that the imam of the attacked mosque in Habbaniya had denounced the al-Qaeda in Iraq organization at Friday services the day before. There was no report of any claim of responsibility for the attack.

“Every question about Mr. Sadr’s motives touches on a different facet of Iraq’s future,” Damien Cave writes in the Times. Most interesting in Cave’s important review of Sadr’s position is his description of the cleric’s complex relationship to Iran, which both enables and undermines Sadr by aiding him directly, while at the same time supporting lower tiers of the Sadrist organization, encouraging them to be more independent. Sadr has responded by protecting loyal members from the security clampdown and purging disloyal elements, going so far as withholding protection to them from the Iraqi or American forces. Cave’s article is by far the most important Iraq article of the day and should be required reading for all those war pundits who still write about Sadr’s organization as though it were a monolithic and unitary force in Iraqi politics. That may be Sadr’s goal, but it’s not the reality. In the midst of the security clampdown, the Sadrist current is undergoing a centralization campaign, and its complex relationships with both Iran and the Iraqi government include both rivalry and partnership.

Kurdish leaders have agreed to the draft oil legislation before the Iraqi cabinet, Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani has announced. The AP reported that Barzani made the announcement in press conference today that was attended by US Amb. Khalilzad, Ernesto Londoño writes in the Post. The US embassy would not confirm Khalilzad’s presence at the press conference to Londoño.

Marc Santora writes in the NYT’s Week in Review section on the murky situation of Samarra, north of the capital. Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic Army of Iraq both have strong footholds in Samarra, both attack the Americans who patrol in the city, and both are hostile to the predominantly Shi'a government forces who have yet to reassert Baghdad’s control over the city. However, Santora writes, “Some members of the Islamic Army of Iraq, the main Sunni militant group here, said in interviews that they were pressing Al Qaeda to focus on Shiite militias and not the Americans, whom they see as a temporary buffer in their fight against the Shiites.” Even if the Baghdad security plan were to achieve what it says it will in the capital, other areas such as Samarra will not be easily brought to heel by the central government.

Meet Mr. Murtha

In the Post, Jonathan Weisman and Lindsey Layton describe Murtha’s faux pas that they say alienated nearly all of the various Iraq factions in the Democratic party, from the leadership, to the party’s centrists, to newly elected Iraq veterans, to the antiwar left, while at the same timeproviding ammunition to White House supporters.

Robin Toner of the Times, however, seems to grant Murtha’s proposals more of a fighting chance, noting his close alliance with Speaker Pelosi and his alleged “folk hero” status among Americans who want to end the war.

In other coverage:

NEW YORK TIMES

In the Week in Review, Thom Shanker considers the effects of US troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that the results have been a de facto reliance on aircraft and gunships for the job of intimidation of adversaries, “billions in new spending,” and concern that the US is not capable of implementing its strategies to prop up allied regimes, say in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, should they come under attack.

C. J. Chivers follows up on the status of wounded Iraq vets Dustin Kirby and Colin Smith who were featured in the Times in November and December. Both were injured in the head by the same type of bullet, but a slight difference in the location of their injuries has meant very different things for their prospects. They are both now at home with their families.

WASHINGTON POST

The hook for the Post’s Walter Reed investigative series last weekend was poor care quality for wounded Iraq and Afghanistan vets, but over the course of the last week, it has become an impressive story of the power of the press. Surely in an attempt at damage control, the Army has begun releasing its own “preliminary” assessments of the hospital, based on an earlier Army investigation, Steve Vogel writes.

In the Post Magazine, Paula Span follows up on the Post’s Walter Reed stories with a lengthy profile of a disabled soldier back home from Iraq, grappling with illness, the strains on his family, and the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the DOD system, all at the same time.

Counting down “11 Days to Baghdad,” David Finkel chronicles one Army commander’s psychological and bureaucratic preparations for deployment, in a front-page feature.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

No weekend edition.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Silent and grey.

USA TODAY

No weekend edition.