Unqualified Offerings

He’s even bamboozled the National Security Advisor! From NSA Steven Hadley’s leaked memo about his recent meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki:

Despite Maliki’s reassuring words, repeated reports from our commanders on the ground contributed to our concerns about Maliki’s government. Reports of nondelivery of services to Sunni areas, intervention by the prime minister’s office to stop military action against Shia targets and to encourage them against Sunni ones, removal of Iraq’s most effective commanders on a sectarian basis and efforts to ensure Shia majorities in all ministries — when combined with the escalation of Jaish al-Mahdi’s (JAM) [the Arabic name for the Mahdi Army] killings — all suggest a campaign to consolidate Shia power in Baghdad.

Are our “commanders on the ground” really falling for these transparent MSM lies?????? Is it possible that, without realizing it, some of them have been getting information from people with Arab names?

Snark aside, the memo makes an interesting read. It’s also worth speculating why “An administration official made a copy of the document available to a New York Times reporter seeking information on the administration’s policy review.” I think the leak is an attempt to reassure Maliki in advance of the summit Baby Sadr doesn’t want Maliki to attend. (Last night we discussed how most Iraqis get their information from sources Americans never see, but I take it for granted that the Iraqi governing elite keep up with the major western media. They have to.) The memo has nary a word of a coup and spends a lot of time talking about how to “strengthen” Maliki’s position. In other words, the leak presents the US government as, completely confidentially, working to increase Maliki’s personal status and power. They’re shining him up, in other words.
(Via War & Piece.)