Sentiments seethed like the weather Thursday near the Kufa Mosque, terra sancta for the followers of Moktada al-Sadr. Under a sky cast in shades of ocher by a sandstorm, the militant cleric’s men struggled to sort truth from rumor in the campaign for Sunday’s election that has put them on the defensive.  Speculation has swirled through Kufa and other Sadr strongholds that he will return from exile in neighboring Iran to rally support before the vote — and that the Iraqi government has reissued an arrest warrant against him. The government’s spokesman has denied it. No one, it seems, knows for sure.  “They’re waging a war of nerves against us,” said Nasser Muhsin, a vendor at a rickety arcade of shops beneath the mosque’s turquoise and tan minarets.  Since the United States invaded in 2003, Mr. Sadr, the mercurial and enigmatic scion of one of Iraq’s most revered ayatollahs, has proved a wild card. This holds true for this election. But rarely have his loyalists seemed as suspicious as today, distrustful of their allies, angry at the government, in particular Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and fearful that their once formidable support has ebbed since their military defeat in 2008. – New York Times