The first hint that the Bush gang was prepared to throw Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki under the bus came in September, when senior administration officials leaked word to the New York Times that they’re no longer confident that Maliki has what it takes to hold the country together. Patience, the NYT reported, is “wearing thin.”
A week later, U.S. officials were still getting the word out, with the administration leaking word that senior U.S. military commanders are questioning whether Maliki has the political will to weed out official corruption and tackle the militias.
When the White House leaks damaging memos to the NYT, you know subtleties have gone out the window.
A classified memorandum by President Bush’s national security adviser expressed serious doubts about whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had the capacity to control the sectarian violence in Iraq and recommended that the United States take new steps to strengthen the Iraqi leader’s position.
The Nov. 8 memo was prepared for Mr. Bush and his top deputies by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and senior aides on the staff of the National Security Council after a trip by Mr. Hadley to Baghdad.
The memo suggests that if Mr. Maliki fails to carry out a series of specified steps, it may ultimately be necessary to press him to reconfigure his parliamentary bloc, a step the United States could support by providing “monetary support to moderate groups,” and by sending thousands of additional American troops to Baghdad to make up for what the document suggests is a current shortage of Iraqi forces.
In fact, the list of complaints about Maliki sounds vaguely familiar.
“His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shia hierarchy and force positive change,” the memo said of the Iraqi leader. “But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
In other words, as Paul Glastris put it, Bush’s NSA sees Maliki as “a wartime leader who speaks obvious untruths, surrounds himself with a narrow group of party ideologues who skew the information that gets to him, puts too few boots on the ground, fails to engage the international community, and may now be at the mercy of violent events beyond his control.”
Remind me, who else might that describe?
In any event, these fairly serious concerns about Maliki’s abilities haven’t exactly put him in jeopardy of losing his job, at least as far as the administration is concerned. The NYT noted that there is “nothing in the memo that suggests the Bush administration is interested in replacing Mr. Maliki as prime minister.”
It’s probably because the Bush gang realizes that no matter who sits in the prime minister’s chair, Iraq will unravel anyway.