Iraqi Death Squads Have Left the Building

BarbinMD wrote a story on the contentious meeting of the Iraqi parliament where al Maliki introduced the new U.S. security plan.
The New Way Forward:  A Progress Report

Judging from a story in the UK Times, the Sunnis may have good reason to doubt al Maliki's sincerity.

Death squad chieftains flee to beat Baghdad surge

A former senior Iraqi minister said most of the leaders loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric, had gone into hiding in Iran.

The former minister, who did not want to be named for security reasons, backed Sunni MPs’ claims that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had encouraged their flight. He alleged that weapons belonging to Sadr’s Mahdi Army had been hidden inside the Iraqi interior ministry to prevent confiscation.

Maliki said last week: "I know that senior criminals have left Baghdad, others have left the country. This is good — this shows that our message is being taken seriously."

This will obviously interfere with the plans to secure Baghdad by sending extra American troops to fight and arrest the leaders of the Shi'ite militias. We all remember how the Baathist army melted away as American troops approached Baghdad, and how it didn't mean that the U.S. had won. But al Maliki apparently doesn't believe this is a bad thing when it's Shi'ite militias who are fading away until the draw down of American troops begins. Even when the notorious torturer Abu Deraa is one of the senior criminals who has taken advantage of the opportunity to disappear from view.

The wingnuts are already mad that we "telegraphed our punches." That's what they will say when the troop escalation doesn't work. But of course it was Bush's choice to wait for months and months of failure before grappling with the issue. It was only because of the combination of the Iraq Study Group and the Republicans being smacked down at the polls in November that he was forced to make a big, public to-do about "talking to lots of people" and "thinking" and "studying," and then announcing his "new" plan with fanfare.

There was only one thing that prevented him from implementing this strategy without announcing it at an earlier time. That thing was his stubborn refusal to admit that he was on the wrong track with Rumsfeld and his claims that we didn't need more troops. And we have absolutely no reason to believe that he would have even pretended to do anything different if American voters hadn't rebelled against his dismal incompetence.