Joseph L. Galloway: Iraq sinks deeper into chaos as our 'friend' turns the other way

[Barrett808]

Just when it seemed that the situation in Iraq couldn't get any murkier, more muddled or more dangerous, it did.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, our 'friend' or our client, if you will, has openly declared his independence from us and his dependence on his most important domestic supporter, the anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

Maliki, it's becoming clear, is as big a part of the problem in Iraq as al-Sadr and his gang of thugs and murderers. But President Bush is, well, staying the course with Maliki with all the obstinacy that he's displayed throughout his sojourn in Iraq.

...

As we approach a December benchmark - standing up 330,000 ill-trained, ill-equipped and unreliable Iraqi army and police units who aren't up to the job of keeping the lid from blowing off - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that he's inclined to approve a plan to add 30,000 more Iraqi troops to that force.

That guarantees that American trainers and advisers to the Iraqi forces, as well as the other 147,000 embattled U.S. troops, will remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future unless the newly independent Maliki orders all of them to go home.

As if 30,000 more Iraqi troops, with the same hasty training, questionable leadership and ambiguous loyalties as the first bunch, might somehow make a difference.

In a war full of futile gestures, that one takes the cake, Mr. Secretary.

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http://www.topix.net/content/kri/2905258055393920561008718450052579654639