The title is total supposition but follow me through the argument and I think you will agree with the conclusion that Iraq is on a knife edge that hinges on the outcome of the US election.  Consider first the players – you’ve got the Kurds in the north who are generally tolerant of our presence but would prefer we were gone so the can finish with kicking the Arabs and Persians off their oil territory in the north.  You’ve got the Sunni’s in the middle who’ve been fighting us tooth and nail for five years and who’s only marginal benefit from our presence is preventing the Shia from taking over completely.
Then you’ve got the Shiite government which is essentially the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades, which we support and who would, in their hearts like us gone, but get a lot of checks and security from us.  Finally you’ve got the other Shiite group,  Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army.  It is this last group that will rule Iraq when we leave.  It is only a matter of time, time which they are bidding until the right moment.

Did someone diary this and I somehow missed it? al Maliki said he thinks we should leave? Bush previously said that if they asked us to leave, we'd leave? We can start bringing the troops home now???

I first found out about this on Think Progress, although they linked to the wrong AP story (corrected link over the flip):

Back in the good old days when global nuclear annihilation was a real and present danger and not just something Dick Cheney talked about to scare people, the United States fought its proxy wars with superpowers like the Soviet Union.  Today, to hear neocon echo chamberlains tell it, our quagmire in Iraq is a proxy war with Iran, a country with an economy and a defense budget that are barely six percent of America’s.  

That, my fellow citizens, is what became of your Cold War peace dividend.

I was captivated by this revolting development in the history of my country, and decided to take my trusty sidekick Google on an adventure to figure how out how and when such a Monty Python caliber phenomenon got started.

From the statements made by Crocker about the most recent events in Iraq you would think it was the pro-American Iraqi government forces against the pro-Iranian forces of Sadr in Basra and Sadr city. He made the case that  the Iraqi's remember Iran's action in the Iran Iraq war (neglecting to mention that encouraged by Reagan Saddam was the aggressor) and that was minimizing Iran's influence with Shia and turning them against groups like the Sadr movement.

Sounds like the beginning of progress? It might be if it wasn't an absurd and complete lie.

In their testimony before Congress today, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker began painting a picture of American progress in Iraq.  But even as the United States faces a diminishing threat from Al Qaeda thanks in part to former Sunni insurgents the U.S. has largely co-opted, American forces find themselves increasingly engaged in an intra-sectarian Shiite conflict in which Iran is seemingly backing all sides.  And with General Petraeus calling for an indefinite pause in the drawdown of U.S. troops after July, President Bush's so-called "return on success" has apparently once again been postponed.

Here, then, are five questions for Petraeus and Crocker:

As many of you have, I’ve become somewhat of a keen observer of the ongoing occupation in Iraq over the past 5 years. If your travails have even remotely resembled my own during the course of these observances the past few months; there’s no doubt it’s been an even more confusing and unpredictable effort. But, there’s one thing that is always predictable: if Dick Cheney travels to Baghdad, you can bet the farm on the fact that the security and military situation is about to become markedly worse.

Cheney’s most recent trip is no exception to the rule.

Deep down in the shadowy recesses of Cheney’s brain, information is processed in a different way than it is for most of us. Where we see what’s happening in Iraq with somewhat jaundiced powers of reason and deduction, (we all want the war to end today) Cheney sees thing differently, with an equally jaundiced outlook. (just going in the opposite direction)

With the attention of the American public distracted by tomorrow's appearances on Capitol Hill of Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, the war in Iraq has entered a new and extremely dangerous phase.  Following the collapse of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's foolhardy, ill-planned assault on the Sadrist Mahdi Army last week, the US Army has apparently decided to seize the bull by the horns and destroy Sadr on its own.

That is the context behind the much bally-hooed headline of today that Sadr has offered to lay down his arms -- if Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani  orders him to do so.

I have to say it again: If the Bush administration put a fraction of the effort it spends on spinning its wars into winning them, it wouldn’t need to spin them.  

Last night, CNN aired an exclusive interview with Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki.  Most of the publicity generated by this interview has centered on Al-Maliki's get-tough pronouncements toward the Al-Sadr Mehdi Militia, with some mention also of his opposition to the State Department's renewal of Blackwater's contract.  

While these are both important issues in themselves, another aspect of Al-Maliki's CNN interview has gone unnoticed and unreported in any headlines that I can find.  Quite simply, Maliki directly asserted that he is perfectly fine with Barack Obama's call to quickly draw down U.S. troops in Iraq, flatly contradicting the doomsday scenarios put forth by McCain, Bush, and the Republicans.  

I've transcribed the relevant segment of the interview on Page 2, below:

To read today's news I fear it may be.

Via Reuters and Yahoo News

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister raised the stakes in his showdown with followers of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, saying in an interview broadcast on Monday they would be barred from elections unless their militia disbands.

The comments followed an offensive by government forces into the cleric's Baghdad stronghold, the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, in which heavy fighting returned to the capital after a week of relative calm when Sadr called his militiamen off the streets.

"A decision was taken ... that they no longer have a right to participate in the political process or take part in the upcoming elections unless they end the Mehdi Army," Maliki said in an interview with CNN, according to a report posted on the U.S. television network's Web site.

Maliki's threat to drive Sadr's millions of supporters out of the political process heightens tensions in a conflict that has divided Iraq's Shi'ite majority and led to the worst fighting since extra U.S. troops arrived last year.

This just up on the AP wire:

Officials in Iran confirmed for the first time Saturday that the country played an important role in brokering a recent truce between the Iraqi government and anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iran's Shiite government helped end the clashes between Iraqi government troops and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia for the sake of Shiite unity, said a senior Iranian official who deals with Iraq.

"It is in Iran's best interests to see unity among Shiite factions," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Last Sunday, when Moqtada al-Sadr announced a ceasefire that he'd reached with the Iraqi government, it seemed pretty obvious from its terms and from the context of the fighting in Basra and elsewhere that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been humiliated in this confrontation. At first however the traditional news media adopted the spin coming from the Iraqi and American governments that the truce amounted to a victory of sorts for Maliki in his "decisive and final battle" against Sadr's militia.

Slowly the American media came to realize that the victory might be a tad "ambiguous". Then came detailed reports of the stunning desertion rate among Iraqi forces sent to Basra, perhaps as high as 30 percent.  Any remaining ambiguity has now evaporated in the Mesopotamian sun:

Iraq's prime minister on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militants after the leader of the biggest militia complained that arrests were continuing even after he ordered fighters off the streets.

The announcement was a major shift from comments Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a day earlier, and came after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr — whose Mahdi Army militia fought government troops in the southern city of Basra and in Baghdad last week — hinted at retaliation if arrests of his followers did not stop.

These arrests had provoked the unrest before Maliki's attempt to clamp down in Basra. Sadr had demanded an end to them in his ceasefire proposal. With an empty show of bravado, Maliki later hinted that the arrests would continue unabated. Now he has crumbled completely.

Al-Maliki's move appeared to be a goodwill gesture toward al-Sadr and his followers. But it was also a dramatic turnabout: He said Thursday that he intended to launch security operations against Mahdi Army strongholds in Baghdad, including Sadr City, home to some 2.5 million Shiites and the militia's largest base.

Al-Maliki said last week that gunmen in Basra had until April 8 to surrender their heavy weapons, but Friday's statement made no mention of that deadline.

This is the leader whom George Bush backed as the man to unify and stabilize Iraq. It's a sad commentary on Bush's acumen, of course. Less noticed perhaps is that Maliki is also the guy who will play a big role in John McCain's campaign. McCain has premised his entire foreign policy on the argument that the US cannot ever allow a "power vacuum" to emerge in Iraq. Maliki is a walking, talking power vacuum.

Thus it's telling that the Iraqi Prime Minister's name has all but disappeared from McCain's campaign website during 2008.  In 2006 McCain was occasionally willing to criticize Maliki's record in public, but once the McCain "surge" began it became expedient to stick to praising the Iraqi Prime Minister for every modest sign of "progress". There were frequent references to Maliki in 2007 at McCain's website. As the presidential campaign heats up, then, it will be interesting to see the extent to which McCain tries to distance himself from an Iraqi leader upon whose incompetence so much depends.

Though the latest NIE on Iraq was delivered to Congress on April Fools' Day, you'll probably never get to see any part of it. The Bush administration decided that the public has no need to know what intelligence agencies think about the state of a country the US invaded and occupied five years ago.

That's hardly unexpected. A few weeks back when the Pentagon delivered it's latest quarterly happy talk, "Measuring stability and security in Iraq" (PDF), it did so with minimum fanfare. Quarterly reports have to be published by law, NIEs do not. And just to make sure that everybody understands that there's no real need to publish this Iraqi NIE, the administration let it be known that it isn't really an NIE at all.

According to an administration official with knowledge of the intelligence process, this morning's intelligence document isn't itself a National Intelligence Estimate. "It's not a formal report," the official said, "it's more or less an assessment memo, an update to policy makers."

It's no surprise that the White House thinks public debate is best served by a misinformed citizenry. What's a little more remarkable, though, is that the WH has now sent out officials to describe the Iraqi NIE's contents to reporters - an NIE it insists on keeping secret. The NYT provides us with an official version of those contents. Treat it all with due skepticism.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq cites significant security improvements and progress toward healing sectarian political rifts, but concludes that security remains fragile and terrorist groups remain capable of initiating large attacks, several American government officials said this week.

The classified document provides a more upbeat analysis of conditions in Iraq than the last major assessment by United States spy agencies, last summer. It was completed this week, just days before the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is due in Washington to give lawmakers a progress report on the military strategy in Iraq.

While the last assessment painted a grim picture of an Iraqi government paralyzed by sectarian strife, the new intelligence estimate cites slow but steady progress by Iraqi politicians on forging alliances between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, said the government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the document is classified.

Actually, the previous NIE from August 2007 was remarkably upbeat as well, citing slow but steady progress:

"There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq's security situation since our last NIE on Iraq in January 2007."

If the anonymous government officials' assessment of the latest NIE is accurate, and that's a big if, then like the last estimate it accentuates the positive. In any case, it probably reveals little about Iraq that the public doesn't already know from news reports (again, much like the August 2007 NIE).

Several lawmakers familiar with its conclusions declined to provide specifics but said it contained little information beyond public accounts of recent events in Iraq. "The stuff that was positive, they emphasized. The negative, they stated, but deemphasized," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.)...

"I was discouraged" by the assessment, Biden said. "I was discouraged by the last one, too."

This is what the WH wants the public to believe about an NIE it can't read:

"The N.I.E. update confirmed that the surge strategy the president announced in January of last year is working," said one senior administration official. "There’s more work to be done, but progress has obviously been made."

That ever elusive "progress in Iraq" the WH has been talking about since June 2003. We know it was making stuff up about progress in 2003, again in 2004, also in 2005, and in 2006, as well as in 2007. But how credible is the Bush administration in 2008?

By a remarkable coincidence, just yesterday the NYT published an account of Nouri al-Maliki's "planning" for last week's disastrous assault on Basra, an account based on named and unnamed American officials. The point of the exercise was to convey the idea that the Bush administration had virtually no idea what Maliki was going to do until two days in advance - and then only because Maliki invited General David Petraeus to a parlay on March 22 and told him his plans.

In short, by the administration's own account it can't be held accountable for last week's failure because it was caught almost completely unawares regarding the biggest Iraqi military operation since 2003. One way or another, the Bush administration's record of perspicacity in regards to Iraq is abysmal.

That's approximately how much we can trust the latest, secret NIE on Iraq.

Toward the end of the most violent month in Iraq since last August (nearly one thousand dead Iraqis), Michael Ledeen threw down the jam with these shrewd observations:

If the Iraqi Government wins this, there will be consequences all around. First, it will curl the toes of the mullahs, because of all the possible outcomes in Iraq, the worst for them is a duly elected government that can fight effectively. Second, as Nibras says, it will greatly solidify Maliki’s position in Baghdad. Third, it will send a double message throughout the region: it isn’t easy to defeat America, and countries that work with America can defeat even the fiercest enemy.

--Michael Ledeen, March 27, 2008

You’d think that after lying continuously about the reasons for the invasion and subsequent five-plus-year occupation of Iraq that the liars in question would be pretty damn good at it by now.

On March 27, 2008, Bush regime officials did tell the truth regarding the fact that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had initiated the fight between Iraqi national forces and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. But that’s where the truth ends. The battle was not an indicator of any type of success for the surge. And, the fighting did not prove the fighting prowess of Maliki’s forces. What this little operation did prove however was that:

Nouri al-Maliki got his ass handed to him on a platter.

It was a grave miscalculation on the part of our nutcase-in-chief and the vaunted General Petraeus. It’s clear that it wasn’t even a product of bad intelligence. It was an ill-conceived exercise in incompetence, short-sightedness and very poor judgment.

I did not make this up:

John,

My mom was a delegate in Dallas this past weekend. She arrived at 7AM and didn't get to leave until 8PM. She said that it appeared the Clinton delegates were trying to drag things out so long that people would have to leave. She thought they challenged about 3,000 delegates and each of them had to go through the credentialing committee.

One of the Clinton delegates from her group challenged the validity of entire precincts. One of the precincts she challenged was almost entirely African American. Towards the end, after this group was credentialed they came by and shook their fists at the Clinton delegate and chanted "we're still here" in her face. My mom said it was a little tense.

McBush's supposed signature strength and he flubbed again.

This has to be a sure sign of incompetence or senility. My goodness, he can't even get current events straight. This is the guy who wants to run U.S. foreign policy? Can we afford another Bush?  

With new elections called for October in Iraq (just before the election here in November) it is imperative that Bush & Co. win that contest. Plan A as put forward by Dick Cheney a few weeks ago to al-Maliki was for Iraqi forces to crush the popular opposition. With the utter humiliation of al-Maliki and his puppet master Bush in the fighting last week in Iraq it is time to come up with Plan B of what we will call Operation Subvert Democracy (Phase 3).