Political Intrigue In Iraq

In addition to Ted Kennedy, another major death in the world of politics will have major repercussions. Only this one's in Iraq.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, died Wednesday, creating a leadership vacuum that could weaken the bloc ahead of the January parliamentary election.

Hakim, 59, died in Tehran, where he was being treated for lung cancer, his relatives and associates said.

Leaders of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq are expected to announce after Hakim's burial in Najaf this week that his son Ammar will become the new head of the party, Supreme Council officials said. However, Ammar al-Hakim, who is in his late 30s, is widely seen as too young and inexperienced to command all factions of the party, and could face a leadership challenge.

The White House offered a terse two-line condolence.

Before this happened, al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and several other Shiite groups (including the Sadr movement) formed a new coalition for the January elections that excluded Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This is a shocking development, considering how Maliki had been ruling Iraq and muscling out his Shiite competition, but the Shiite bloc must have felt safety in numbers. With al-Hakim's death, however, and one less credible figure atop the coalition, that faction could split, leading Maliki to be able to pull off a victory after all. However, he'd probably have to partner with Sunnis to do it, and the question becomes whether sectarian bonds will carry over into the voting booth for the majority of Iraqis.

Juan Cole discusses what the death of al-Hakim could mean for Iraqi politics:

After al-Hakim fell ill with cancer and began spending most of his time in Iran undergoing treatment, the UIA coalition fell apart. A rival of the Supreme Council, the Islamic Mission Party or Da'wa, grew in strength, benefiting from the vigorous leadership of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki (from spring 2006). Elements of the old Shiite coalition were put together again by other players this summer, with a new Iraqi National Alliance being announced just days ago. ISCI cleric and parliamentarian, Humam al-Hamudi, will chair the UIA coalition, succeeding al-Hakim. Al-Hamudi is known as a committed Shiite activist who played a major role in crafting Iraq's constitution [...]

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat (The Middle East) reports in Arabic that the future of the new Shiite coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, is shaky now that its leader is dead. Other observers doubted that things would change much on the ground, since Abdul Aziz was already on extended medical leave and all the arrangements were undertaken by his office.

The death of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim emblazons a question mark over Iraqi politics going forward. Important parliamentary elections are scheduled for January, and al-Hakim is not there to lead his own coalition to the polls. His son Ammar is still inexperienced and relatively young. The foremost figure in ISCI outside the al-Hakim family is probably Iraqi vice president Adil Abdul Mahdi, who is widely viewed as a pragmatist rather than a party activist.

There's still lots of dealmaking left to be done, but al-Hakim's death probably strengthened Maliki's position at a time where it appeared he could get muscled out. Overall, talking political infighting is a far better discussion to have about Iraq than, well, fighting.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

It's concerning enough that the Pakistani Taliban has responded to the offensive against them in the Swat Valley with bombings in Lahore and Peshawar. Clearly they are embedded enough in local populations to carry out attacks without a base of operations in Swat, even in cities like Peshawar which are not Taliban strongholds. Juan Cole makes the argument that this could all turn public opinion against the Taliban, which is possible.

While is is possible that the public will blame the government for stirring up so much trouble with the Swat campaign, it is also possible that the public will turn decisively on the Taliban. There are precedents for such loss of popularity. After the 1997 attack on innocent tourists in Luxor, Egypt, the Egyptian public turned against the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Grouping (al-Gama'a al-Islamiya), the two small terrorist groups that had committed many acts of violence in the 1970s and 1980s and had assassinated President Anwar el Sadat in 1981. EIJ declined into irrelevance in Egypt, and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya's leadership has renounced violence.

But what REALLY bothers me is the series of attacks over the border, in Iran. A Shiite mosque in Zahedan was struck earlier in the week, and yesterday, gunmen fired on a campaign office for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Preelection tensions rose Friday in Iran's religiously and ethnically mixed southeast after gunmen opened fire on the president's campaign office and a radical group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque the day before that killed up to 23 people and injured scores.

Iranian authorities blamed the United States for the violence in Zahedan, on the border with Pakistan.

"The hands of America and Israel were undoubtedly involved in this incident," prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told supporters in Tehran, referring to Thursday's bombing of a Shiite mosque. "Although Wahhabis and the infidel and evil Salafis were an accomplice to the crime, they were being led from somewhere else."

Wahhabi and Salafi are puritanical schools of Sunni Islam rooted in Saudi Arabia. They have inspired Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network, as well as the Taliban and other groups that denounce Shiite Islam, the majority sect in Iran [...]

Hours earlier, the Sunni militant group Jundallah, which is linked to Al Qaeda and draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, claimed responsibility for the mosque bombing on a Shiite holiday. It made the claim in a phone call to the United Arab Emirates-based Al Arabiya satellite news channel.

The caller claimed that the victims were hard-line pro-government militiamen discussing the June 12 election.

Now, this province is basically lawless anyway, so I don't want to make too much of it. But I fear that this widens the larger Shiite-Sunni struggle inside Islam, but that hardliner cleric trying to push blame onto the Americans is a ploy to increase tensions and move away from any reconciliation and negotiation. You can clearly see the tensions between Shiite Iran and their Sunni competitors here. You can also see it in Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki throwing up his hands at any further gestures to the Saudis, accusing them of allowing Sunni insurgents to flow through their borders. This is something that many of us worried about at the start of the Iraq conflict, the spread of sectarian violence throughout the region. I really hope this is not the beginning.

Iraq Violence Is Rising

The President made one mistake last night, when he talked about violence still being below the levels of "a year ago." Actually, with yesterday's attacks killing 47 it has risen to that level.

BAGHDAD — April was the bloodiest month for violence in Baghdad in more than a year, another sign that Iraq's security gains are beginning to reverse.

President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday night that violence has risen in recent weeks, but he said the levels of violence were still below last year's.

Calling recent bombings "a legitimate cause for concern," Obama said "civilian deaths . . . remain very low compared to what was going on last year."

But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.

The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.

To maintain credibility in foreign policy, Presidents must talk straight with the American people. There's a reason for the rising violence, and that's the failure of the surge to effect a meaningful political reconciliation, which is leading to an increase in sectarian violence. Obama could make that case, and tweak his Iraq plans to increase the diplomatic efforts to force those political solutions. In fact, by dispatching Hillary Clinton to Iraq last week, he's doing that. But he shouldn't minimize the scope of the violence in Iraq right now. That's disingenuous and distorting.

The Exceptions To Leaving Iraq Begin

I'm still trying to get back in the swing, but I am troubled by this story about the US and the Iraqis negotiating exceptions to the June deadline to remove troops from the major cities in Iraq.

The United States and Iraq will begin negotiating possible exceptions to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraqi cities, focusing on the troubled northern city of Mosul, according to military officials. Some parts of Baghdad also will still have combat troops.

Everywhere else, the withdrawal of United States combat troops from all Iraqi cities and towns is on schedule to finish by the June 30 deadline, and in many cases even earlier. But because of the level of insurgent activity in Mosul, United States and Iraqi military officials will meet Monday to decide whether to consider the city an exception to the deadline in the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, between the countries.

“Mosul is the one area where you may see U.S. combat forces operating in the city” after June 30, the United States military’s top spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. David Perkins, said in an interview.

In Baghdad, however, there are no plans to close the Camp Victory base complex, consisting of five bases housing more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops. Although Victory is only a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city’s boundary, Iraqi officials say they have agreed to consider it outside the city.

Mosul remains troubled, and the recent rise in Baghdad may necessitate troops staying through the elections. But this is a slippery slope. This past weekend, I talked with Bill Hedrick, a candidate for Congress in CA-44 who has two sons and two daughters-in-law with a combined 10 tours of duty in Iraq. He told me how concerned he is about the residual forces, about continuing the occupation, and about these efforts at exceptions and delays and moving of the markers. He brought up the examples of Korea and Germany, and our continued presence in those countries, however friendly.

I would imagine this would concern the Iraqis as well. I'm sure many of them think that the US will never leave, and this adds to that frustration. Which can easily turn to violence. I fully understand that the sectarian conflict is rising but we can do little about that from a military perspective. Not to mention that the Prime Minister is thundering against a raid carried out by US forces:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's prime minister denounced a deadly U.S. raid on Sunday as a "crime" that violated the security pact with Washington and demanded American commanders hand over those responsible to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.

The U.S. military, however, strongly denied that it overstepped its bounds and said it notified Iraqi authorities in advance — in accordance with the rules that took effect this year governing U.S. battlefield conduct.

The pre-dawn raid in the southern Shiite city of Kut ended with at least one woman dead after being caught in gunfire and six suspects arrested for alleged links to Shiite militia factions [...]

A statement from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — in his role as commander general of Iraqi forces — called the raid a "violation of the security pact."

He asked the U.S. military "to release the detainees and hand over those responsible for this crime to the courts," according to an Iraqi security official who read the statement to The Associated Press.

According to the Washington Post Maliki wants the soldiers to be prosecuted in Iraqi courts for violating the security arrangement. Juan Cole explains:

Under the Status of Forces Agreement, the US must notify the Iraqi government before it takes military action.

Al-Maliki is touchy about such an operation in Kut and probably wants personal approval in such matters. Kut is in the Shiite south, where al-Maliki has been attempting to spread the influence of his Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa). It has a significant Sadrist constituency, and al-Maliki is trying to put together coalition provincial governments with the Sadrists. So the US raid made al-Maliki look weak and puppet-like and made him unpopular in a key area where he wants support.

Maliki is not necessarily a good faith actor. He refuses to reconcile with Baathists and Sunnis, and he wants to consolidate power. The information on the raid in Kut never went up the chain of command from local Iraqi officials, but Maliki wouldn't have minded if this had taken place elsewhere. He is out for his own power and not a broader reconciliation among the Iraqis. He is a dangerous partner, and this tantrum further breaches the trust that Iraqis have in the Americans leaving. That could lead to violence very quickly.

Meanwhile, insurgents attacked an important Shiite shrine over the weekend. Very worrying.

Reconciliation Through Withdrawal

Earlier this week Marc Lynch wrote about the rising violence in Iraq and the inability of the Sunni Awakening forces and the Shiite central government to reach a reconciliation. He makes some important points:

Given all that uncertainty, it would be unwise to offer a confident assessment of what's really going on. But the emerging crisis surrounding the Awakenings and the uptick in violence do both seem to be primarily driven by the continuing refusal of Maliki and the Iraqi government to make meaningful political accommodations and their decision to move against at least some of the Awakenings groups at a convenient moment [...]

I'm obviously worried about all of this. I've been warning about the potential for trouble with the Awakenings project for a long time, and it would be easy to say that those predictions are now coming due. But I think it's way too early for that -- there is still time for these troubles to demonstrate the costs of political failure and to become the spur to the needed political action.

That's why it's really important that the United States not now begin to hedge on its commitment to the drawdown of its forces in the face of this uptick in violence. It is in moments like this that the credibility of commitments is made or broken. Thus far, the signals have been very good -- consistent, clear, and tightly linked to continuing pressure on political progress. President Obama reportedly pushed hard on the political accommodation front during his stopover in Baghdad last week, and General Odierno did very well to emphasize on CNN yesterday that the U.S. is firmly committed to removing its troops by the end of 2011. Maliki and everyone need to take deep breath and strike power sharing deals before things go south, and understand that they will pay consequences if they don't.

It's not just the crackdown on the Awakening forces, but the broad trends against human rights and freedom of the press that cause alarm. Maliki has been laying the groundwork for a strongman rule since last year, and it's starting to come to fruition. 25 gay men have been killed over the past two weeks, and newspapers are being harassed by the Iraqi military. This is very troubling all around, but I agree with Lynch that the United States must stay on its glide path to withdrawal, because that's the only way to force reconciliation between the sectarian factions. Ultimately, we can no longer be the backstop for internecine violence, acting as Maliki's proxy militia while he runs roughshod over his competitors. I hope we don't get cold feet on this.

Drawing A Straight Line

The ruling Shiite government gained responsibility for paying the Sunni Awakening forces. They stiffed most of them and even started arresting some of the Sunni leadership. And then...

A series of six car bombs exploded in or near Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 30 people and wounding scores more, according to witnesses and the police.

Three bombs struck markets in predominately Shiite neighborhoods around Baghdad, but there did not appear to be any obvious pattern to the attacks. The blasts began shortly after dawn and continued in disparate parts of the city into the afternoon.

Um, I think there IS an obvious pattern to the attacks.

The spike in attacks in Iraq seems to me to be DIRECTLY attributable to the tension between the Shiite ruling government and the Sunni Sons of Iraq. While this guest poster at Informed Comment claims that the disputes in Iraq are about control of resources and power, that seems to me a distinction without a difference. Right now, Maliki and the Shiites are in power, and the Sons of Iraq/Awakening forces are dependent upon them. And they certainly have back channels to what's left of the insurgency, and the increased fighting represents another stage in that power relationship. It does nobody good to turn Iraq into the forgotten war that Afghanistan used to be. The Maliki government needs to be pressured into meeting their responsibilities to keep the country secure and stable, and having a US Ambassador in place would maybe help. So stop grandstanding, Senate GOP. People's lives are at stake.

Send One Back, Take Fifty More

No doubt under duress from the Americans, the Iraqi government abruptly released a Sunni Muslim Awakening Council leader and dropped all charges. Of course, he's just one of the several they've captured.

While freeing Raad Ali, the Shiite-led government continued to hold another Sunni leader, whose arrest Saturday triggered an uprising that left at least 17 people wounded, and it's arrested a number of other Sunni paramilitary leaders and members this week.

The turmoil is fueling fears that rising tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and between Sunni Arabs and Kurds could trigger a new round of violence and even disrupt the Obama administration's plans to draw down American forces in Iraq.

Ali, the head of the Sons of Iraq in the Ghazaliyah neighborhood in northwest Baghdad, returned home to a rain of celebratory shooting by neighbors and supporters. He told McClatchy that he'd been charged with seven crimes, including kidnapping a man who'd already accused someone else of the crime, planting roadside bombs, displacing Shiite families and killing two police officers, one of whom had been his own follower.

He said that all of the charges were bogus. He was treated well while in prison and was able to plead his case before a judge Wednesday, he said.

What's worrying is that the arrests are continuing. Another 50 were arrested yesterday in Ameriyah, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. Ali was a US ally, but he's but one of what is now ranging into hundreds of detainees. And he is correct that this could spark a new round of violence.

"The Awakening succeeded to make everything good and clean the face of the government," Ali said. "They (the Iraqi government) are crazy, they are foolish, they don't need to target us . . . . we help you and support you why do you want to target us?"

He said he'd told U.S. officials many times that the Iraqi government's apparent plan was to "arrest big leaders," and that this would "destroy" the U.S. project to end the Sunni insurgency. But the American said he was wrong, he said.

I hope somebody at the highest levels of the White House is paying attention to this. It could explode.

...Oh dear. This could get really, really bad.

An American military aircraft opened fire Thursday night on Sons of Iraq members who were allegedly spotted placing a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Friday.

The incident, which killed one suspected member of the paramilitary group and wounded two, is the latest sign of the fraying allegiance between the paramilitary groups and the U.S. military.

Can you say "insurgency resurgence"?

Sectarian Strife In Iraq Does Not Presume A Continued Military Presence

Brian Katulis, one of my favorite foreign policy wonks, has a very good paper spinning off of the incident in Baghdad over the weekend, which signaled a breakdown in relations between the Shiite central government and the Sunni Awakening forces. Katulis argues that this was inevitable:

The standoff between two U.S. “allies” this weekend in the heart of Baghdad is a harbinger of things to come in Iraq. The showdown between Iraq’s central government security forces and members of Sunni militias, known as "Awakenings," had nothing to do with the size of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and almost everything to do with enduring tensions in Iraq—multiple struggles for power between competing Iraqi factions.

What happened this weekend in central Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and members of the Sunni Awakening groups was not unexpected, in large part because many of the tactics used in the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces built a shaky and unstable foundation. Violence broke out in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil—just a few miles north of the Green Zone—when Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces arrested Adil Mashadani, an “Awakening” militia leader on charges of terrorist and sectarian crimes. According to news reports, Mashadani allegedly maintained ties with Al Qaeda forces, helped plan roadside bombing attacks against Iraqi security forces, and ran an extortion racket that squeezed Fadhil residents for tens of thousands of dollars.

Whether these specific charges against Mashadani are true or not, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone like Mashadani was on the payroll of the U.S. taxpayers. I argued in a paper on the Awakening groups more than a year ago that the same U.S. tactics that contributed to the so-called “success” of the surge were actually undermining the process of helping Iraq bridge internal divisions. The tactics employed during the surge helped create alternate centers of power in supporting new militias, which built a shaky foundation that led to short-term security gains at the expense of longer-term political stability.

Iraq still exhibits a stark divide between competing sectarian factions, and the surge did nothing to assuage that. Instead we paid off the Awakening forces to provide the illusion of stability without really addressing the root causes that could make such stability lasting. And we allowed delay on the fundamental political solutions that need to be made between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq. As Thomas Ricks says, "That is Iraq 2009. Does it sound peaceful to you? Does it seem like the political questions vexing Iraq have been solved?" And he also thinks the Sadrists could take advantage of the chaos.

If the Awakening fighting spreads, I wouldn't be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia re-emerge. I've always thought the Sunni Awakening forced him to go to ground, because he didn't want to be the only guy taking on American forces. But if the Sunnis are on the attack again, it might be game on for him as well. I am reminded of Ambassador Ryan Crocker's worry, expressed in my new book and elsewhere, that the future of Iraq was something like Lebanon. That is, it has a government, but it is shaky, and there is violence in the streets, with some political parties having armed wings that are outside the control of the government.

That's probably accurate, and yet it's important to note that we don't have 140,000 troops in Lebanon right now, and when we tried to put troops there we eventually were forced to leave, and Ronald Reagan made that call and I would argue that it was the right one. Anyone using the continued sectarian strife in Iraq to call for a continued military commitment from the US is not being mindful of other realities. As Katulis notes, the Iraqis set the withdrawal date, not us. We have bigger challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan that push against a giant commitment in Iraq. In addition, our military presence probably inflames this situation. The US should be engaged diplomatically to force a solution between the factions, but our military is essentially being used as a pawn for Nouri al-Maliki as he jockeys for power. Without soveriegnty, and without the US military as a crutch, Iraq will simply never be stable.

Uprising?

I know the Iraq war is over and everything, but this strikes me as a notable development:

Sunni militants staged a violent uprising in central Baghdad Saturday after Iraqi forces detained a leader of the Sons of Iraq, a mostly Sunni paramilitary force that until recently had received salaries from the United States and is now on the Iraqi government payroll.

Sixteen people were injured in the battle in the once volatile Fadhl neighborhood, and five Iraqi soldiers were missing - snatched Saturday night by members of the Sons of Iraq, a security official said.

The arrest of Adel Mashhadani, who leads the force in Fadhl, and his assistant, heightened fears among Sunnis that the Iraqi government plans to divide and disband the movements now that its taken control of all but a few thousand of the 94,000 members across the country.

Earlier in the week we learned that Sunni Awakening forces weren't receiving the jobs promised to them by the central government. Falling oil prices have lessened the funds for the government, and they are having trouble paying existing employees, so payouts and make-work jobs for Sunni militants are unlikely. And this has caused anger and distrust.

The point of the Sunni Awakening was one of reconciliation, to re-integrate former militiamen into Iraqi society. If each of them could be arrested for past criminal actions, is there any way to avoid massive resistance and a resumption of Sunni-Shiite conflict, as well as violence against US forces (which occurred yesterday as well)?

"They sold him," said Khaled Jamal Qaisi, Mashhadani's deputy, referring to the U.S. military.

"The Americans are vile people and they betrayed our trust," Qaisi said. "We are the ones who fought al Qaida. They want things to return as they used to be? If they don't release Adel al Mashhadani today, you will all be prisoners in your homes."

This could be a blip, and Mashhadani could be a legitimate criminal. But when I start to see pitched gun battles in the streets of Baghdad again, I get nervous.

Prop. Thamaaniyah

The Iraqi Parliament did pass the withdrawal agreement mandating the end of a US military presence in Iraq by the end of 2011, but Juan Cole notes that the Sunnis extracted a price for their support.

Of 275 members of parliament, 198 attended and 145 voted in favor. That means it barely passed from the point of view of an absolute majority, though it was a clear simple majority. Apparently the al-Maliki government bowed to Sunni Arab demands that the agreement be submitted to a national referendum, California-style. If that is true, it is possible that it could still be rejected by the Iraqi people. But al-Maliki got it through parliament by painting opponents as implicitly opposing a US withdrawal, and that campaign tactic may work with the general public, too.

I think such a tactic is more likely to work with skittish politicians than an Iraqi public which wants the occupying forces out, and knows that if they vote down the agreement the forces would have to leave immediately. The Sunnis demanded other concessions from the Shiite government in exchange for their votes, including the release of political prisoners and an end to Shiite suppression of the minority, and when those promises get predictably reneged, that would threaten the referendum's passage as well.

It is, however, interesting that the Shiites, Sunnis, politicians throughout the Parliament, and every individual Iraqi will have a chance to weigh in on this security agreement with the United States, yet basically one "decider" in this country is allowed to do so.

We are, however, a shining city on a hill, so that balances things out.

I Allow Myself To Be Optimistic For A Paragraph

As I remember, right around the same time as Katrina there was this horrible bridge collapse in southern Baghdad that killed upwards of 900 people. It wasn't from a bombing, just a rumor of a suicide attack that caused a stampede. Three years later, in the middle of a war zone, that bridge has been reopened as a source of hope for the remaining residents.

It's not much, but when there's so much bleakness in Iraq, it's comforting to see Sunnis and Shiites walking together.

(Has the Lower 9th Ward been reopened yet?)

Instant Gratification

While in retrospect this seems obvious, until this point I hadn't factored in that the Iraqis were waiting out the election results like the rest of us, and making sure that they would have an honest broker.

Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

"Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011," said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. "If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama."

Spencer Ackerman has more on this. For background, understand that this deal was dead, completely, and the American forces were by the end of the year going to be in the country illegally. Plus, with bombings ticking back up the country was starting to move into a tailspin. Now, with Obama's presence, the deal really becomes a withdrawal timeline. And it looks like he'll have a mandate for change in Iraq as well:

Obama won’t be able to enter office with the Iraq problem solved. But it will be well on its way to being solved. The strategic framework for his desired withdrawal will be in place. And since he and the Iraqi government see eye to eye on the issue, Obama will have the credibility in place to work toward a political compact among the different Iraqi factions — something the Bush administration hasn’t ever had and a McCain administration wouldn’t ever have had.

That’s not to say Obama will achieve it, just that the stars are better aligned now.

Amazing what a change in leadership can do.

The Lost Reports

There's a new study on Afghanistan warning of impending crisis, with an ineffective government losing power and influence to the Taliban, full-scale corruption and severe breakdowns in security. But there's also a report on Iraq that dampens the boasts of victory through surge that we keep hearing.

WASHINGTON -- A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.

U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Um, I can assure you that it won't be.

The report lays out the structural challenges which have let to be dealt with:

U.S. officials say last year's surge of 30,000 troops, all of whom have been withdrawn, was just one reason for the improvements. Other factors include the truce declared by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militia; and the enlistment of former Sunni insurgents in Awakening groups created by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremists.

The draft NIE, however, warns that the improvements in security and political progress, such as the recent passage of a provincial-election law, are threatened by lingering disputes between the majority Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minorities, the U.S. officials said.

Sources of tension identified by the NIE, they said, include a struggle between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen for control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk; and the Shiite-led central government's unfulfilled vows to hire former Sunni insurgents who joined Awakening groups.

McCain will use this to walk that "we're winning but have not yet won" tightrope and argue that withdrawal equals surrender. But in actuality, our presence has done nothing to reduce sectarian tensions apart from the violence. The NIE is saying that the conditions still exist for civil war or sectarian strife, and having our troops act as a proxy army for Maliki, who wants to be a strongman, actually exacerbates the problem, increases frustrations, and heightens instability. Nobody has forced the factions to come together and reconcile - in fact, Bush decentralized the government but simultaneously empowered Maliki's militia and has now handed over control of the Sunni Awakening forces to him, which is bound to shock the system as the Prime Minister tries to consolidate power. Creating what amounts to a theocratic dictatorship allied with Iran is not a good prospect for Iraq or the world, and makes hollow the focus on violence and security in the short term.

Peter Galbraith makes a similar point in the New York Review of Books:

Less violence, however, is not the same thing as success. The United States did not go to war in Iraq for the purpose of ending violence between contending sectarian forces. Success has to be measured against US objectives. John McCain proclaims his goal to be victory and says we are now winning in Iraq (a victory that will, of course, be lost if his allegedly pro-surrender opponent wins). He considers victory to be an Iraq that is "a democratic ally." George W. Bush has defined victory as a unified, democratic, and stable Iraq. Neither man has explained how he will transform Iraq's ruling theocrats into democrats, diminish Iran's vast influence in Baghdad, or reconcile Kurds and Sunnis to Iraq's new order. Remarkably, neither the Democrats nor the press has challenged them to do so [...]

From 2003 until 2007, the Bush administration helped Iraq's most pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties take and consolidate power. Naturally, the Shiites—and their Iranian backers—welcomed the US involvement, at least temporarily. Now the United States is putting heavier pressure on al-Maliki to include the Sunni enemy in Iraq's security forces. It has created a Sunni army that, as long as the US remains in Iraq, can only grow in strength. Al-Maliki and his allies want the US out of Iraq because the American presence has become dangerous.

Without American troops, the Iraqi army and police would be able to move against the Awakening. Should Sunni forces prove too powerful, Iran is always available to help [...]

Al-Maliki's agenda is transparent. The Kurds and Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition's ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain the Kurds politically and geographically. America's interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far less important to him than the Shiite interest in not having a powerful Sunni military that could overthrow Iraq's new Shiite order. The Kurds are too secular, too Western, and too pro-American for the Shiites to share power comfortably with them [...]

John McCain says that partly because of his persistent support of the surge, we are now winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates continued US military support to an Iraqi government led by Shiite religious parties committed to the establishment of an Islamic republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. He praises the Awakening and but seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden plan for a decentralized state but has said nothing about how he would protect Iraq's Kurds, the only committed American allies in the country.

George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.

One great tidbit in there is that Maliki was kind of picked up at the last minute by the US when they needed a new Prime Minister, and that initially, they got his first name wrong. Yet in the name of increasing security, we've given him all kinds of power, seemingly ignorant that he's a longtime Dawa Party member who spent 20 years in exile in Iran.

Condi Rice is meanwhile crying that Iraq has been harder than she personally imagined. Perhaps it's because you have to actually pay attention to it.

The Latest In Iraq

I've been remiss in not writing more about Iraq lately, but Gen. Petraeus' recommendation to pause any drawdown in troops until Bush can hightail it out of office provides an opening. At first blush, you have to look at this and shake your head. Republicans spent a whole convention telling us that we're unquestionably winning in Iraq, and now the commander (with the President sure to follow) says that the situation is fragile and we have to wait another Friedman Unit before we start sending anyone home.

Now, Petraeus is right in a certain respect. Baghdad remains a dangerous place, and this campaign to evict squatters carries quite a bit of risk, as those displaced begin to return. The situation in Kirkuk is approaching a reckoning, with the Kurds seeing how Maliki routed them in Diyala and sensing that he will do the same there, depriving the autonomous region of their only oil-producing town. The Sunnis are raging over a friendly-fire incident where the US killed 6 members of their security forces, and while the US has handed over security for Anbar province to the Iraqis, that could intensify tensions, not dampen them, because Maliki is unlikely to integrate the Awakening forces he now essentially controls into the security apparatus. In fact, Maliki's swelled head is a serious threat to long-term stability in Iraq:

He is making himself the symbol of Iraqi nationalism by insisting on a date certain for withdrawal of US forces. Of course, this is more symbolic than real. Any deal will have plenty of loopholes in it. If Maliki wants to keep US forces around after 2011, and McCain is in the White House, he can do so. (Maybe not if Obama wins.) But the appearances are important here. He can go to the provincial elections (if they happen) and the national elections (if they happen) in 2009 saying that he is the man who got a timetable for American withdrawal. Moreover, he just replaced the Foreign Ministry team negotiating with the US side with his own team, headed by his national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Ruba'i and made up of experts not from the FM but from the prime minister's office. This is his negotiation now in a very personal way. Just today the first major oil deal of the post-Saddam era was announced, and it was with a Chinese company. Another bit of symbolism.

He has conducted a fairly successful campaign against the Sadrists, or at least it seems so far. He has skillfully used the new Iraqi forces and the US to cut at the power of the Mahdi Army and go after Sadrist leaders and officials. In doing so, he has also portrayed himself (with some accuracy) as the man who cleaned up militia misbehavior in Basra [...] He is now openly taking on the Sahwa (Awakening Councils) forces, demonstrating that he will not compromise on Shia Arab control of the Arab parts of Iraq. He is reneging on his earlier promises to integrate tens of thousands of Sahwa guys into the regular security forces [...] He is pushing a bit against his own allies in his coalition itself. There was a very interesting incident in Diyala province two weeks ago, covered by al-Hayat. The Iraqi forces in Diyala entered Kurdish areas in the province (Khanaqin) and ordered the peshmerga out. There was a stand-off, eventually settled when Massoud Barazani made a rare trip to Baghdad to work out the problem. But the taste left in the mouth of the Kurds was not a pleasant one, and Maliki has made it clear that the Iraqi Army can go wherever in Iraq he orders it (well, he hasn't tried to send it into the KRG) [...]

So we have what looks like a coherent strategy to go after opponents, weaken allies and portray oneself as the symbol of Iraqi nationalism in dealing with the U.S. Is Maliki overreaching? Despite the Mahdi Army setbacks, Sadrists could still do better at the polls (if they happen) than Maliki's candidates. The Sahwa people could return to insurgency, destroying the security advances of the last year. The Kurds could undercut Maliki's government in parliament. An ambitious army general could push him aside, if his control of the army is less than total. But so far, Maliki seems to be on a winning streak.

This is some solid analysis. The Bush Administration probably feels it is in their best interest to allow Maliki to rule as a strongman. They have always been attracted to dictatorial rule as a means of maintaining order. However, Maliki's tough moves against the Sunnis and Kurds could easily backfire. Maliki clearly thinks he can go it alone, and thus he's extracting all sorts of concessions on a status of forces agreement. I agree that the implementation of that agreement will depend on the US President, and Maliki is largely playing a political game to be the nationalist champion of Iraq.

The truth is, however, that such tension would end if the US simply left Iraq. Maliki is pushing to become the strongman right now because he has US backup. If we actually left instead of constantly pretending to leave he would be forced to negotiate with all sides of the conflict. Plus it would take the large target off the backs of the occupying force. Maliki's worrisome slide into dictatorship would be stifled, threats toward our troops would end, and the situation would force a negotiated solution far more than the current stalemate.

McCain and his team wants to focus on the decision of the surge, when that is irrelevant to what we need to do to go forward. I think the circumstances clearly argue for withdrawal, whereas McCain's position is that leaving is losing. Eventually this will catch up with him in November. He really has become marginalized as virtually the only political figure who wants to stay there indefinitely. It's not only stubborn, it's the wrong strategy for long-term stability.

World Report

Because I'm almost out of here, I'll just mash these together, but they're all important, and would all merit a post of their own.

• So the ruling party in Pakistan chose Benazir Bhutto's widow, Asif Ali Zardari, to be their President. Of course, when Bhutto was Prime Minister, she and Zardari bilked the country for millions upon millions. Zardari doesn't want to reinstate Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the head of the Supreme Court, because Chaudhry might then arrest him. So this is cutting a wedge through the fragile coalition. The former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, wants to slash the Presidential power before Zardari accedes to the position. Sharif's Muslim League also wants Chaudhry back on the bench. Pakistan is a mess, and a mess we can't afford right now.

• While George Bush finally came around on a withdrawal timeline, he's still not all the way where Muqtada al-Sadr needs him to be:

The debate over a deal that would chart the future of U.S. troops in Iraq has reignited the rhetoric coming from Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, who denounced the plan Friday for not setting a firm date for American withdrawal [...]

Iraq's government spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, reiterated Friday that any departure of U.S. troops was "subject to Iraqi national security" and that the dates were hypothetical. The final departure date "will be jointly set" by Iraq and the United States, he said, downplaying suggestions that the draft was the final deal.

At the weekly prayer service in Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, chants of "No to the agreement!" rang out through loudspeakers positioned along the street. Worshipers responded with applause and repeated the chant as the service ended and people drifted away [...]

At prayer services across the country, Sadrist preachers said any deal struck with the Americans was a blow to Iraq's sovereignty. In Sadr City, listeners agreed.

"Everyone is talking about how it will really serve the interests of the Americans, not the Iraqis," said Mohammed Fadim, whose well-stocked grocery store overlooks the wide avenue where worshipers knelt side by side in prayer. "Everyone knows the U.S. administration. Once they occupy a country, if they want to make an agreement to stay, 80% of the terms will fulfill their interests."

This is bad news. Sadr leads a cultural movement regardless of who holds the guns, and Maliki was pushed to a timeline in the first place because of pressure from the Sadrists. If Sadr turns against a deal pushed by the Parliament, Maliki's team will be crushed in the provincial elections. Just the act of getting this ratified (Maliki is going through the Parliament) could rip the country to shreds. Not good.

• In a neglected corner of the "war on terror," Somalia is going to crap.

Islamic militants said Saturday they had seized control of Somalia's third largest city after three days of fighting that left about 70 people dead and saw thousands flee Kismayo.

The Islamic courts movement, which controlled the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the south for six months in 2006, said it wrested control of the southern port city of Kismayo from clan militias.

The ICU never really stopped fighting, as the US paid little or no attention, despite the fact that Somalia, with almost no real government and extreme poverty, is a hotbed for extremism. This goes down as another failure of Bush-era foreign policy.

• Russia is leaving Georgia. Mostly leaving. Georgia is apparently disputing the checkpoints Russia has set up in Georgian territory. It's a bit dodgy, but to characterize it as the greatest crisis since the Cold War is king of nuts.

Armistice?

Not exactly; three years is a long time. But we've been hearing that the US-Iraq agreement on troops would have a "general time horizon" (as John Stewart said, something you move toward but never gets closer), but this sure sounds like a timeline to me.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal of combat troops from the country, according to senior American officials.

The draft agreement sets 2011 as the goal date by which U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq, according to Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Humood and other people familiar with the matter. In the meantime, American troops will be leaving cities, towns and other population centers by the summer of 2009, living in bases outside of those areas, according to the draft.

This is of course entirely dependent on the implementation, this only talks about combat troops, and many parts of the Iraqi government must agree to this (only Bush has to give this a thumbs up, because as you know we don't have a Congress). But clearly, the Iraqi Parliament has been able to wring more concessions out of the Administration than anyone ever has, and they did it by using the Administration's own tactics - getting close to the deadline and being stubborn - against them.

Iraq has plenty of its own problems - the looming powderkeg in Kirkuk, a more assertive Nouri al-Maliki pushing around prominent Sunnis throughout the country and muscling out Shiite rivals before provincial elections, the very real threat of spasms of violence if the elections are seen as rigged, and most troubling, Maliki simply won't integrate the security forces.

A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who'd joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country's security forces [...]

But the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite Muslims, has brought only a relative handful of the more than 100,000 militia members into the security forces. Now officials are making it clear that they don't intend to include most of the rest.

"We cannot stand them, and we detained many of them recently," said one senior Iraqi commander in Baghdad, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue. "Many of them were part of al Qaida despite the fact that many of them are helping us to fight al Qaida."

He said the army was considering setting a Nov. 1 deadline for those militia members who hadn't been absorbed into the security forces or given civilian jobs to give up their weapons. After that, they'd be arrested, he said.

Some militia members say that such a move would force them into open warfare with the government again.

These struggles are localized and, honestly, inevitable in the jockeying for power, and our troops there are serving no national interest for the United States OR Iraq. In fact, it's very clear that their presence is allowing Maliki to edge out the competition, secure in the knowledge that our military will protect him. He figures he needs two or three more years to crush everyone, at which point the American combat troops he's using as a proxy can leave (it also strengthens his hand to show his people that he ended the occupation). And so we are enabling authoritarianism and the building of a strongman. This endangers Iraq in the medium and long-term, but it sure makes the place safe for the multinationals for the time being.

A speedier withdrawal would remove that cover and, while making the country more chaotic in the short term, might actually force them to reconcile their differences (obviously we'd remain engaged diplomatically). Our troops are too precious and our military too broken to have them being used as a nascent dictator's paramilitary with no strategic benefit to the United States.

Everybody Stop Talking About How The Surge Is Working

Because you look unbelievably stupid once inevitable violent events reappear. If nothing has been done to deal with the root causes of violence in Iraq, which is the case, then all the paint on all the schools in Baghdad isn't going to mean a thing. Extremists and militants are still capable of spectacular attacks, and the three-front war (Sunnis v. Shiites, Shiite militias v. Shiite militias, Mahdi Army v. US military) remain in place. The Sadrists are still a social and electoral force within Iraq, the Dawa elements still want to crush them, the Sunnis still don't trust the Shiites, the unity "government" is still non-functional.

McSame and his cast of characters are content to go down with this ship, but every time they put on the rose-colored glasses and sing the praises of the surge, something like this happens. And it's not abstract - 51 people DIED today. For no reason. Because of an unnecessary invasion and occupation.

The Civil War Acceleration Program

Oh goody, let's pay and arm more Iraqis with sectarian viewpoints and little interest in reconciliation.

Young men armed and paid by the U.S. military took to the streets of the Iraqi capital's Sadr City area for the first time Wednesday to guard their neighborhoods, part of a new strategy designed to recruit former Shiite militiamen to American-created security groups, U.S. officials said [...]

Toting AK-47 assault rifles for a $300-a-month salary, the young men are viewed by U.S. officials as the best way to address a dearth of security forces in Sadr City, the site of bitter clashes this spring between U.S. forces and militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The officials hope the initiative will lead some militia supporters away from violence by paying them to protect the area.

But even officers helping to create the program acknowledge there is risk in supplying weapons to men who may have recently encouraged violence against U.S. troops. "Are these guys all going to be lily-white angels? No," said Maj. Byron Sarchet, information operations officer for the brigade responsible for Sadr City. "We need to tread lightly."

There's something unsettling about an armed Shiite, likely to be a Mahdi Army sympathizer or even a member, maintaining order through the barrel of a gun saying "We are here to protect our neighborhood and make sure the militias don't take control." Uh, that would be the DEFINITION of a militia member. And setting this up so that young unemployed Shiites have loyalty only to their paycheck portends disaster. It also is another way in which Bush is trying to force a permanent presence in Iraq. If we stop paying these patrols, chaos will ensue. So we must stay, and keep paying.

Here's a taste of how this could blow up in our faces:

Not all Iraqis agree. Lt. Col. Yehiye Rasul Abdullah, commander of the Iraqi army battalion in Jamila, recoiled at the idea of working with supporters of Mahdi Army fighters who killed his soldiers.

"Those who have contributed to the spilling of Iraqi blood, we will never accept them," he said after coming to check on the guards.

So when the Iraqis do send the US military packing, what is going to become of all these heavily armed foes of the government and the government security forces who hold them in contempt?

It's like we're shaking up a bunch of soda bottles and just waiting for them to explode.

Sistani Offers Fatwas Allowing For Armed Resistance To US Troops

We have the potential for a major problem in Iraq. As Shiites jockey for power, the most prestigious cleric in the country is sensing the value among the population of fighting the US-led occupation, and very quietly permitting the targeting of US troops. It may have as much to do with internal politics as anything else, but it makes Iraq incredibly dangerous for any American, and reinforces the need to take our men and women off the front lines and out of gun sights and back home where they belong.

The AP story, based on information from Shiite officials, suggests that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has been out of the spotlight of late, is issuing under-the-radar fatwas to his followers:

Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible - a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.

The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

So far, al-Sistani’s fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private - rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population - according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.

There is a lot at work here.

• Sistani is ill and has been out of the public spotlight for many years. In the meantime, popular resistance to the occupation from the Shiite community has been led by Muqtada al-Sadr. So there may be some reassertion of control here in the wake of attacks on Sadrist strongholds in Basra and Sadr City. However, Sadr and Sistani are essentially on the same side here, and this may be a signal to top deputies of the Sadrist movement that Sistani is behind them and just waiting for the right moment to call for, as Sadr put it, "open war."

• It would be hard for Prime Minister Maliki to continue to legitimately work with the US government if such a fatwa were made more public. After the 2006 sectarian violence it was Sistani who was most instrumental in keeping order and turning the situation around from the Shiite perspective. It would be hard for US troops to maintain safe havens inside Iraq under a Sistani edict to leave, and much harder for them to have any kind of visible role in maintaining security. This is already being shown to be the case - in the Sadr City offensive, US troops were put to the sidelines and even the Sadrists appreciated it. This begs the question of how, in such an environment, there could possibly be a role for US troops at all.

• However, this could be more like a "sense of the Senate" resolution than a call to murder - essentially putting a nail in the coffin of the idea that any permanent bases would be tolerated by the Iraqi population. I think this is ultimately about the SOFA agreement that Iraq and the US are currently negotiating. Today Barbara Lee (D-CA) got her amendment demanding Congressional authorization over any agreement passed the House, and basically Sistani just vetoed the whole thing.

• Maliki is acknowledging, through aides, that there's nothing he can do about this, and in the end he'll side with the will of the Iraq people:

A senior aide to the prime minister, al-Maliki, said he was not aware of the fatwas, but added that the “rejection of the occupation is a legal and religious principle” and that top Shiite clerics were free to make their own decisions. The aide also spoke on condition of anonymity.

As Cernig says, "Sadr now has a free hand from Sistani as long as he plays nice with Maliki. He won't shoot himself in the foot by openly opposing Sadr." Conservative gasbags may be gloating about Sadr's imminent demise, but he still holds all the cards and the support of a substantial part of the Shiite community. Maliki knows this and will not get in the way of resistance against Americans. That's because he understands that the occupation is massively unpopular and opposing resistance to it would be a death sentence.

This makes me extremely uneasy. I feel like there's a Beirut bombing in the future if we don't start planning an exit. We don't have much time:

“(Al-Sistani) rejects the American presence,” he told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to media. “He believes they (the Americans) will at the end pay a heavy price for the damage they inflicted on Iraq.”

Juan Cole, a U.S. expert on Shiites in the Middle East, speculated that “al-Sistani clearly will give a fatwa against the occupation by a year or two.” But he said it would be “premature” for the cleric to do so now [...]

“Changing the tyrannical (Saddam Hussein) regime by invasion and occupation was not what we wished for because of the many tragedies they have created,” al-Sistani said in reply to a question on his Web site.

“We are extremely worried about their intentions,” he wrote in response to another question on his views about the U.S. military presence.

Matthew Duss, Eric Martin and Kevin Drum have more. The occupation has always been unsustainable. But Sistani's rulings appear to make that even more obvious. If he acts soon, our troops could be in a horrible situation over there. And I certainly don't think the White House is paying nearly enough attention to this growing crisis.

P.S. Pushing elections as the answer to all of our problems is really a mistake. Maliki's operations in Basra and Sadr City were political in nature - he wanted to crush the Sadrists and make it easier for his groups to win the elections - but it's taking too long, and elections already have been postponed until after our Election Day in November, we learned today in Senate hearings. If Bush pushes them to coincide with our political cycle, the Sadrists will win. The only way they don't is if Maliki rigs the election, and the result of that would be chaos.

The Coming Attack On Iran

I noted that yesterday, Tim Russert kind of came out of nowhere by basically announcing to Barack Obama that we're about to drop multiple bombs on Iran. I'm guessing that Russert, who talks to all sorts of foreign policy elite members and figures inside the Bush Administration and presumes those conversations to be off the record unless specified, knows a lot more about this than he's letting on. And over the last week, we've paradoxically seen Administration rhetoric over Iran grow more heated, with the head of the CIA claiming that Iranian policy is "to help kill Americans in Iraq," while the US has joined major powers in offering a package of incentives to Iran to get them to curtail the nuclear program that the latest NIE says they've already stopped.

This looks like the classic Bush Administration conception of "diplomacy"; offer a woefully inadequate package to the adversary, and when it falls short, say to the world that "we tried to achieve our goal through diplomatic means" and we now have no choice but to use our military power. Indeed, the negotiators are already managing expectations:

The incentives are based on an offer first made to Iran in June 2006, which diplomats say has been "refreshed" to include enhanced nuclear cooperation but do not differ substantially from the first one.

"It is not a major step forward, frankly, because we think it was a very good offer in the first place. We simply don't understand why the Iranians have not put more interest in it," the senior U.S. official told Reuters.

"It doesn't augur well for a reaction, given what they have said already," he added, anticipating Iran's formal response.

In other words, we're going to offer exactly what has already been turned down, and when Iran turns it down again, it'll be proof that they're hiding something and must be stopped at all costs.

This is also taking shape in the way that Iranian involvement in Iraq continues to be presented to the public. Today's Michael Gordon article claiming Hezbollah training facilities inside Iran that are helping Iraqi Shiite militias, is a White House press release masquerading as a NYT article. The presence of training camps in Iran would justify American belligerence and provide a target for airstrikes outside of the nuclear question. But this article doesn't provide evidence corroborated by anyone outside of government sources. The Iraqi government, presumably under American pressure, is investigating these claims of nefarious Iranian involvement, and has yet to find any hard evidence, although after making that statement, the Iraqi government spokesman hurriedly called reporters and changed his tune, which outlets like the Washington Post reported:

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called reporters late Sunday night to clarify remarks he made at a news conference earlier in the day, when he appeared to say that there was no hard evidence that Iran was allowing weapons to come into Iraq. Dabbagh said his comments had been misinterpreted.

"There is an interference and evidence that they have interfered in Iraqi affairs," Dabbagh said in an interview arranged by a U.S. official. When asked how he would characterize the proof that Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq, he said: "It is a concrete evidence."

As Juan Cole notes, the Post is deliberately misinterpreting al-Dabbagh's words, so they could write a headline asserting "concrete evidence" of Iranian involvement.

CSM reports on the way the Iraqi government is in between the US and Iran and says it lacks hard proof of Iranian interference. It is forming a commission to look into the matter. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said at his first Sunday news conference that there is no hard evidence that the Iranian government is sending in arms to destabilize Iraq.

The headline writer of the Washington Post took the low road. Dabbagh met a second time on Sunday with reporters to clarify the issue of Iranian arms in Iraq. He said that there were certainly Iranian weapons in Iraq, but the question was where they came from. The Post headline tries to make it look as though Dabbagh was accusing the Iranian government; he was simply leaving open the possibility. Check into who wrote the headline. It will be revealing.

After all, Iran has a well developed criminal black market in arms (Ronald Reagan once got involved in it). So the presence of Iran-made weapons proves nothing about Iranian government intentions. The ayatollahs in Tehran have been openly siding with the al-Maliki government against the Mahdi Army militia.

The combination of Bush-friendly reports in the media, along with Russert's blithe suggestion asserting that we're moments from an attack, is very suggestive that there's going to be a strike. Iran has suspended proposed talks with the US about security in Iraq. Andrew Cockburn is reporting that covert operations have already begun, including full support for the Iranian opposition group the Mujahedin-e Khalq (listed as a terrorist group by the State Department) and allows for the targeted assassination of Iranian officials. Scott Ritter thinks an Iranian strike is imminent.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the US does plan to attack Iran?

SCOTT RITTER: There’s no doubt in my mind that the United States is planning right now, as we speak, a military strike against Iran. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and almost every senior US military official has pretty much acknowledged the same. They speak of the need to punish Iran and deter Iran from continuing to provide material assistance to Iraqi groups, these so-called “special groups” that operate, according to the United States, outside of the umbrella of the Mahdi Army. And they speak of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command as being a rogue organization within the Iranian government that provides this support. The United States Senate, through the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, has pretty much given a target list blessing to the US military by passing a resolution that labels the Revolutionary Guard Command as a terrorist organization. And the Bush administration, of course, is engaged in a global war on terror backed by two congressional war powers resolutions.

We take a look at the military buildup, we take a look at the rhetoric, we take a look at the diplomatic posturing, and I would say that it’s a virtual guarantee that there will be a limited aerial strike against Iran in the not-so-near future—or not-so-distant future, that focuses on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command. And if this situation spins further out of control, you would see these aerial strikes expanding to include Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and some significant command and control targets.

Many breathed a sigh of relief when the NIE showed that Iran has suspended their nuclear program, but the warhawks just went to Plan B. They are seasoned at shifting rationales for war, after all.

The plans are full-speed ahead from my vantage point and nobody is doing a whole lot to stop them. We know that Cheney/Bush isn't going to be deterred by public opinion polls. Leading Democrats might have to stop thinking about the next election for a few minutes and mobilize to put a halt to this.