"The problem that we see and that others see here, is whether the Sadrist movement is a political movement or it is an armed militia .."

Via Friday-Lunch-Club

"...The administration has sought and received assurances that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki will not offer the followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr positions in charge of Iraq’s security forces in exchange for supporting Mr. Maliki’s bid for a second term in office, according to officials familiar with negotiations now under way.Mr. Sadr’s followers for years fought American and Iraqi troops in Baghdad and elsewhere, and while they have embraced the political process, they remain hostile to an enduring American role in Iraq.

The Sadrists’ surprising support of Mr. Maliki, only weeks after opposing his nomination, raised alarms in Washington and gave new urgency to the efforts to persuade Mr. Maliki to include the country’s other main factions in a new government.

“The problem that we see and that others see here — and I want to underline others see here — is that there is not clarity on whether the Sadrist movement is a political movement or it is an armed militia which carries out political objectives through violent means,” Ambassador James F. Jeffrey told reporters in Baghdad last week. “And a democracy can’t tolerate that.”...

The administration has worked feverishly — on the telephone from Washington and in person in Baghdad — to break the deadlock even as the focus here has shifted to the war in Afghanistan, especially in Congress. It is now fighting a perception of drift in American policy in Iraq.

In Washington, administration officials also are resisting efforts by Congress to cut $1.5 billion from the State Department’s budget for operations in Iraq.

“I worry that having invested hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq — that now that we’re at the end game — we’ll stint on the resources that are needed to bring this to the kind of conclusion that we all want,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently told an audience of R.O.T.C. students at Duke University. ..."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 11:40 AM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian