"As soon as possible"

That is how fast Nouri al-Maliki, the elected sovereign leader of the sovereign nation of Iraq wants American forces to leave his country. He has embraced the position offered by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to start withdrawals and get our troops the hell out of there in sixteen months.

Maliki was careful to back away from outright support for Obama. "Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business," he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain's more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: "Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Iraq, Maliki went on to say, "would like to see the establishment of a long-term strategic treaty with the United States, which would govern the basic aspects of our economic and cultural relations." He also emphasized though that the security agreement between the two countries should only "remain in effect in the short term."

Maliki's comments come in the context of Senator Obama making a trip to the war zones this weekend to "see for himself" the dog-and-pony-shows that these events are at their very core - but the masses require these juggernauts so they can feel like their candidates are "soing something." But ask any Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine - it's all just Kabuki theater, and the productions are hellaciously expensive.

SOFA shopping continues...

On Friday Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said that negotiations with the United States on a long-term security pact have come to loggerheads, strongly indicating that an Iraqi-U.S. strategic pact may not see the light of day before the aWol bu$h (mal)administration draws to a merciful end in January. "We have reached an impasse, because when we opened these negotiations we did not realize that the U.S. demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and that is something we can never accept," Maliki told Jordanian newspaper editors during a visit to Amman.

Since March, the US and Iraqi governments have been "secretly" negotiating a long-term agreement that would provide a legal basis to define the United States role for the occupation of Iraq to continue after the current U.N. mandate expires on 31 December. "We can't extend the U.S. forces permission to arrest Iraqis or to undertake the responsibility of fighting terrorism in an independent way, or to keep Iraqi skies and waters open for themselves whenever they want," Maliki said in his first detailed comments on the negotiations. "One of the important issues that the U.S. is asking for is immunity for its soldiers and those contracting with it. We reject this totally," he added. (The next time some dipshit compares the occupation of Iraq with our forces in Korea, Japan, Germany, etc...ask them how many mercenaries we have running around shooting up those countries willy-nilly, murdering civilians at traffic roundabouts and be prepared for a blank stare.)

Back in November it was announced that bu$h and Maliki intended to finalize the agreement by the end of July of this year, shooting for an endorsement by the 275 member Iraqi parliament by years end.

That, however, looks unlikely.


Iraqi officials have begun to raise their voices in protest to the American draft proposals, on the grounds that the Americans were attempting to walk all over Iraqi sovereignty and "consolidate the occupation" - making explicit the implication that an agreement was unlikely before we have a different president.


Iraqi sources in Amman told the Middle East Times that Maliki assured leaders of the large Iraqi community in the Jordanian capital that his government would not accept a pact that in any way threatens Iraqi sovereignty. Sources close to the Prime Minister told the Middle East Times that Maliki told them in a meeting in Amman that the government has turned down four U.S. drafts proposed since March, adding it will take time before arriving at an agreement which would not cement U.S. presence, and getting it endorsed through parliament. Those same sources said that Maliki assured leaders of the large Iraqi community in the Jordanian capital that his government would not accept a pact that in any way threatens Iraqi sovereignty.

The Iraqi prime minister's remarks sharply contrasted with Bush's insistence, during a visit to Germany this week, that he was confident that differences would be ironed out and at reaching a strategic deal with Iraq.

Iraqi lawmakers have said they were facing U.S. pressure to meet deadlines on core issues regarding the status of their country that should take months to negotiate, particularly as the country is still in a state of war and with the large presence of the 150,000-strong U.S. troops currently there.

Last week, a majority of Iraq's parliament wrote to the U.S. Congress rejecting a long-term pact with America if it excludes a commitment to withdraw U.S. forces.

"The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms obligating the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq," the letter to Congress said.

Iraqi lawmakers said Baghdad had turned down two U.S. drafts this week alone, after a "toned-down version" with ambiguous wording allows the U.S. military free access to Iraqi bases and fails to set a time limit.

U.S. officials have insisted that Washington was not seeking "permanent bases" nor planning to use Iraq as a launching pad to attack neighboring countries, such as Iran and Syria.

Sources close to the negotiations have revealed that the rejected U.S. drafts on using Iraqi military bases excluded a time limit on access to the bases to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security." The authorization for these operations was identified as "temporary."

On immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, the latest draft dropped the protection of civilian security contractors and confined immunity to U.S. military personnel only.

Iraqis strongly oppose the presence of tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors, after last year's killing of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad by Blackwater, a U.S. firm protecting American officials in Iraq.

Lawmakers, however, are also opposing immunity for U.S. troops and have vowed not to sign any deal that would protect the soldiers from suspected war crimes.

The negotiations will continue "until an agreement is reached" but Iraqi officials have made it abundantly clear that they will not rush headlong into the arms of the Americans just so political deadlines can be met in Washington. Especially if the agreement doesn't offer safeguards to Iraqi sovereignty and an end to occupation.

And by the way - don't go thinking that Sadr is beat down and gone back to his video game addiction. On Friday, he announced the formation of a new armed group to fight U.S. forces in Iraq. "The resistance will be carried out exclusively by a special group which I will announce later," Sadr said in a statement read out at a mosque in the Iraqi Shiite town of Kufa. "We will keep resisting the occupier until liberation or martyrdom."

All hell breaking loose

Heavy fighting has erupted in Sadr City, starting Sunday when Iraqi and coalition forces retaliated against the Mahdi Army after rocket attacks rained down on the Green Zone from the Shi'ite slum.

The retaliatory attacks failed to quell the attacks on the Green Zone, however, and rockets continued to fall. Two American soldiers were killed in the Green Zone and seventeen others were wounded. The deaths were the first of American service personnel in the fortified area since last July. The violence spikes as Petraeus and Crocker are in Washington to testify before congress about the stunning success of the Surge™ that has thus far failed to achieve political reconciliation among the fractious groups vying for power in post-Saddam Iraq.

The events of the last few days are certain to provide plenty of ammunition for the congressional pie-fights that are on the horizon. Republican warmongers will say it proves we can't ever leave, Democrats will say that time is up, we can't sustain it, and should start leaving.

The timing of the violence is also worth noting for another reason. In the wake of the stand-off in Basra that strengthened Sadr's hand, Maliki is under pressure to regain some of the stature he lost in that fiasco. Basra solidified Sadr's bloc as the provincial elections loom, and Maliki faces not just a military draw (which amounts to a win for the side lacking air power) but a political defeat at the hands of the young former video-game junkie. Faced with that reality, Maliki now says militias must disarm. In a statement, the council declared that all political parties must immediately dissolve their militias and surrender their weapons if they wish to take part in elections.

The fighting draws to a close a relatively restive few days in Baghdad. On Sunday morning, an Iraqi military unit rolled into Sadr City supported by an American Stryker squadron, and were met by militia fighters with RPGs.

After the Iraqi soldiers came under attack, American forces in Abrams tanks, Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles rumbled to the scene. An American helicopter fired at least two Hellfire missiles at militia fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades, and blasted one of their vehicles. Later at least one militia-fired rocket hit the Jamilla market, a heavily frequented part of Sadr City, where clashes left at least 20 people dead, Iraqi officials said.

A large whoosh from a rocket disrupted a briefing in Sadr City for a small group of reporters, prompting correspondents and soldiers to duck. The news conference at the lone American Army and Iraqi combat outpost in Sadr City was given by Gen. Abud Qanbar Hashim, the Iraqi commander for Baghdad, and Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, who leads the American division charged with securing the capital, and began as bursts of gunfire rattled nearby streets.

Hammond seemed to dismiss the rocket as an errant discharge that was intended for the Green Zone.

In recent days, Maliki has issued a series of inconsistent statements in regards to militias and his willingness to take them on. The Iraqi General who was put in charge of the Sadr City operation attempted to assure Sadr's followers that the move was not aimed at any specific group, but at all militias. “The main thing is that arms should be in the hands of the state,” he said. “And we will never allow any armed group to carry arms as an alternative to the state to provide security to the citizens."

Americans have a different tactical objective...they want the rockets and mortars to stop falling on the Green Zone, and are pursuing them to their source. This has them occupying abandoned dwellings and buildings and living in pretty damned primitive conditions as they fend off counterattacks by a well-organized opponent with a command and control structure that is surprising in it's efficacy.

Sgt. Maj. Michael Boom of the First Squadron, Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment, said more than 1,000 American and Iraqi troops were operating in his sector. He said the recent fighting began March 25 when the Americans heard that Iraqi checkpoints were being overrun.

“My soldiers pushed out to help the Iraqi security forces re-establish the checkpoints. In some cases, we actually took over the checkpoints until they could get forces back there,” he said. “My companies have been taking direct fire every day.”

On March 28, the Americans moved to take control of the militia rocket sites to try to blunt the attacks on the Green Zone. The militias responded with a heavy counterattack the next day.

“They obviously wanted to retain that ground and maintain their ability to shoot rockets with impunity,” said Lt. Col. Dan Barnett, the squadron’s commander. “They have a command and control structure. They have a plan in place.”

The fighting spiked as Iraqi forces, backed up by American support, attempted to clear a neighborhood east of the outpost.

Maliki has spent the last week attempting to do damage control after failing to crush the militias in Basra as he had boasted his forces would. The stalemate left him weaker and Sadr stronger. So Maliki spent some of his remaining political capitol and got a decree from the Security COuncil - on which he has a seat - to push a demand that militias disband. The Security Council issued a fifteen point proclamation, one of the points being that all Iraqi's and especially sect leaders, “appreciate the role of the army in imposing security and order in Basra and the rest of the provinces.”

Mahmood Uthman, an independent member of Parliament who is part of the Kurdish Alliance, said he doubted that the Sadr group would go along. Mr. Sadr and his followers, he said, are likely to insist that any call for disarmament be applied to other political parties with militias, including the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose armed wing is the Badr militia.

Luway Smessem, the head of the Sadr party’s political committee, said that though the group agreed with much of the statement, party officials had “reservations” about some points, including the demands that militias disband and that Mr. Maliki’s Basra campaign be supported.

“The Mahdi Army is not a militia,” he said. “We don’t have masked fighters and everyone knows who we are and who our commanders are.”

The immediate future is tenuous and there is much at stake. And I am extremely nervous because I don't trust any one of the feckless, self-serving jackals that occupy positions of power.

Can it be January now? With enough congressional Democrats taking seats that no matter who wants to retain troops in Iraq, they won't have the funding? Please?

Déjà vu

As the shock wears off and the analysis after the fact of what went wrong in Basra is pounded out, I see a microcosm of the whole sorry mess that has unfolded over there brought into sharp focus.

But interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. Maliki overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare.

“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”

As the Iraqi military and civilian casualties grew and the Iraqi planning appeared to be little more than an improvisation, the United States mounted an intensive military and political effort to try to turn around the situation, according to accounts by Mr. Crocker and several American military officials in Baghdad and Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two senior American military officers — a member of the Navy Seals and a Marine major general — were sent to Basra to help coordinate the Iraqi planning, the military officials said. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were pressed into service as combat advisers while air controllers were positioned to call in airstrikes on behalf of beleaguered Iraqi units. American transport planes joined the Iraqis in ferrying supplies to Iraqi troops.

In Baghdad, Mr. Crocker lobbied senior officials in the Iraqi government, who complained that they had been excluded from Mr. Maliki’s decision-making on Basra, to back the prime minister’s effort there.

An "impulsive leader" who launches an attack without adequate personnel and equipment? With just part of a plan? Leaving others scrambling to cover your ass? Sounds a lot like the little idiot ordering the inspectors out and the Army in - after firing the guy who told him he was barking mad for trying to do it "lean and mean" the Rumsfeld way.

It's small wonder that aWol is so taken with Maliki - if they aren't the same freakin' guy, they at least share a personality disorder.

Is al-Maliki ready to compromise?

Four days after ordering Iraqi Security Forces into Basra to dislodge and disarm Shi'ite militias loyal to Moqtada al Sadr, and issuing a stern ultimatum that the militias disarm "or else" the ISF has faced stiff resistance from the Jaish al Mahdi and Maliki is backing off his "or else" puffery, deciding instead that maybe bribery will be more effective than that deadline he set and the militants mocked. He is now offering cash to militants who turn in weapons.

Yeah, I'm sure that is going to work. It isn't like ISF forces took off their uniforms, kept their guns and went over to the other side or anything. Oh...wait...yes they did.

McClatchy reports that 231 people have been killed in the fighting in Basra, with heavy casualties sustained by both sides. If not for the United States coming to the rescue of the Iraqi forces in Basra with American air power, it would have been a crippling defeat for the ISF. As it stands, it is merely humiliating.

In Baghdad, the United States had to take the lead in operations in Sadr City, New Baghdad and Kadhemiya, while Iraqi forces hung back in the rear. Americans, too, met stiff resistance - in spite of their superior weaponry and armored vehicles, air strikes were called in to tip the scales in their favor.

And on the other side of the world, the deluded dipshit who started this whole unholy clusterfuck waved off the unraveling of the tenuous situation in Iraq like it was nothing, good news even.

In Washington, President Bush praised Maliki's courage in attempting to quash "criminal elements" in the Shiite militias, and he declared the offensive to be a "defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

But some U.S. military officials privately worried that the Iraqi government had underestimated the resolve of firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias. The Iraqi government "may have underestimated how difficult this (launching an offensive against rogue elements in Basra) can be," said a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The U.S. military in Baghdad reported an uptick in violence beyond the areas of heavy combat. "It's something that has spilled over from Basra," said Lt. Col. Steven Stover, the U.S. military spokesman for Baghdad operations. "We're not so sure that the (Mahdi Army operations) freeze is lifted. There's not been a public announcement. We're kind of hopeful that these are still rogue elements that are not adhering to it. We're also not naive."

A U.S. military official in Baghdad said the United States had little to no involvement in planning the Basra operation, which began some 10 days after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Maliki in Baghdad.

"The operations are Iraqi-conceived, Iraqi-planned and Iraqi-led," said the official, who said he wasn't authorized to be quoted by name. "Coalition forces were not involved in their planning or decision to go, but are providing advisers, logistics and air weapons teams. Additional quick reaction forces are on standby if needed."

The fighting receded somewhat in Basra, but there was no sign of the Mahdi Army being forced from its strongholds.

Casualties continued to rise, however.

"Defining moment," indeed. But the definition isn't the one that anyone was hoping for.