Maliki places his final bet (Iraq catchall)

With Condi Rice standing behind him (with a gun to his head?), Prime Minister Maliki issued what may well be his last challenge.

Political parties must either get rid of their militias or get out of politics, Iraq's prime minister said Thursday, in his toughest warning yet to groups blamed for the country's wave of sectarian violence. ....

"The presence of parties with militias in the government is not acceptable." "The political parties must obey the decisions of the government or else get out of the political process. I don't believe there is any power that wants to leave the political process," he said,

Maliki has no way to enforce something like this, and just by saying it, he's pushing himself farther into irrelevancy. (The great irony, as noted by the AP reporter, is that this meeting, and Maliki's very life, was being guarded by SCIRI militia at the time.)

(CSM) The US staying in Iraq is exactly what Al Qaeda wants.

(AP) "U.S. commanders have defined victory (in Baghdad) as reducing violence in the capital to the point where Iraqi civilian police could handle security."

(Same article) It's not a civil war, but the US is trying not to affect the balance.

To achieve success, the Americans and their Iraqi partners are trying to weaken both the Sunni and Shiite extremist groups equally.

“I can’t drive (the Mahdi Army) into the dirt and let (al-Qaida) basically conduct suicide attacks at will,” one senior coalition intelligence officer said on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “I’ve got to take both elements out of the equation.”

(WaPo, NYTimes) Sen. John Warner gets big headlines on his statements questioning the current strategy on Iraq. Not too explosive, but he is the top military rep in the Senate.

(CNN) "That's because the situation has escalated beyond the random potshots. Now, U.S. troops are hunted by well-trained sniper teams who lay in wait on rooftops and other well-shielded positions."

(And, as you watch news today, make note, every reporter from Iraq, every single reporter, is noting that the violence and the security situation is getting significantly worse.)