Maliki to US: Attack Sunnis, He'll Handle Sadr

There is more BS coming from the Iraqi government. Apparently they are concerned about a precipitous withdrawl of US forces. Nor have they been enamored by even a temporary increase in forces, largely due to Sadr opposition rather than the shear folly of the effort. But Bush will do anything to appear effective at this point, no matter how many of our sons and daughters he sacrifices.
According to washingtonpost.com,

Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has created a two-pronged security plan for Baghdad in which U.S. forces would aggressively target Sunni Arab insurgents instead of Shiite militias. At the same time, Maliki would intensify his efforts to weaken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and contain his Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. Under these conditions, Maliki would accept a surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad, according to two Maliki advisers with knowledge of the plan. Maliki plans to discuss his proposal with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and senior U.S. commanders during a meeting in Baghdad on Thursday, the officials said. The Bush administration is contemplating a temporary increase in troops to help stem the highest levels of violence since 2003.

It seems that Sistani has blessed a new coalition to form an Iraqi government, now languishing without a quorum due to absent members and the withdrawl of the Sadr representatives. From the New York Times

Iraq’s most venerated Shiite cleric has tentatively approved an American-backed coalition of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties that aims to isolate extremists, particularly the powerful Shiite militia leader Moktada al-Sadr, Iraqi and Western officials say.


[...]American officials have been told by intermediaries that Ayatollah Sistani “has blessed the idea of forming a moderate front,” according to a senior American official. “We wouldn’t have gotten this far without his support.”

However, this seems unlikely to be successful. The Shia coaltion have made many similar promises in the past. Even with the support of Sistani, as Juan Cole of Informed Comment points out:

The problem is that not all of the Iraqi Accord Front may be willing to join the coalition, and perhaps not all of the National Iraqi list will come in. Moreover, the idea that the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Kurds, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq are going to hold together as a united coalition very long strikes me as daft.
This plan of cutting the Sadrists out of parliamentary power and then launching a military attack on their paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, seems to me unlikely actually to reduce Muqtada's power and influence.