Not really updated this for the past few days, as my wife’s birthday has taken precedence.

First, we have Maliki threating an escalation against the Mahdi Army (see here and here), and then we have reports that he’s seeking to ease tensions with the Mahdi Army, and that he has
suspended raids against them.

So it appears that there are some mixed signals out there.

It doesn’t help that the performance of the state security forces was atrocious, with More well over 1000 deserting or refusing to fight.

Abu Aardvark, who has an advantage over most bloggers, and for that matters most US journalists, in that he can read Arabic, the fact that Maliki’s response to all of this has been to recruit over 10,000 members of the Badr Brigades (you know, the ones who are in the pay of the Iranian Republican guard) and the Dawa militias, after insisting that there were no resources available to hire more forces after insisting that there were no positions available to Sunni security forces.

Nothing Maliki does is about anything but short term personal political advantage, which should come as no surprise.

In related news Muqtada al-Sadr is offering to help purge the security forces of militia elements, which I assume means elements of the Badr Brigades and the Dawa militia, and we are seeing an uptick of violence in Sadr City.

If this is not surreal enough for you, the State Department just renewed the contract for Blackwater security with out any changes to the terms, so they still have a license to kill with impunity.

Needless to say, being really pissed off by this, because there is one thing that all the various factions in Iraq can agree with, they want the unaccountable, incompetent, and violent mercenary forces out of their country.

Given the timing of the Basra raid, I have come to the conclusion that this was instigated by Bush and His Evil Minions^™, particularly Dick Cheney, who visited just before this all blew up, at least in generalities, if not specifics.

I think that they wanted a dramatic sign of progress prior to the Petraeus testimony