Captain Ed notes: [1]
Earlier today, the Italian news service AKI reported that the presumed leader of the largest insurgency in Iraq will start cooperating with the Iraqi government [2]. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of the highest-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s government, reportedly pledged to work with Iraqi and American forces to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq:
The leader of Iraq’s banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party’s former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.”AlDouri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces,” al-Jashaami said.
Al-Douri has decided to deal directly with US forces in Iraq, according to al-Jashaami. He figures in the 55-card deck of “most wanted” officials from the former Iraqi regime issued by the US government.
In return, for cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda, al-Douri has asked for guarantees over his men’s safety and for an end to Iraqi army attacks on his militias.
Recent weeks have seen a first step in this direction, when Baathist fighters cooperated with Iraqi government forces in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives in the volatile Diyala province and in several districts of the capital, Baghadad.
This could be game, set, and match for the Iraq War.
No joke, for that. One wonders if it’s possible that all these calls from the usual suspects for the head of Maliki weren’t just something more that they were proven dead wrong about. If so, perhaps they would be better off just being a fairly quiet about Iraq altogether. I find Ed’s read of the matters leading up to this business revealing:
Putting all of this together, it looks like Maliki decided to dump Sadr at the beginning of the surge. Sadr fled to Iran for a while, returned to see whether he could weasel his way back into power, and then pulled his deputies from Maliki’s government. When it didn’t fall, Maliki went to the SIIC to cut a deal with them instead. Once he did that, he brought the Kurds into it and looked for an opening with the Sunnis of Tikrit.
The turning of al-Douri, if true, would indicate that Maliki may have succeeded in marginalizing Sadr and bringing together the rest of the disparate elements of Iraq at least into a relationship where unity could occur
So much for the argument about Maliki and his effectiveness. So much, as well, for the clients that no progress was being made for political settlement . And with it (chuckle) so much for the Democrats. They just got through spending the last month trying to get their talking points fine tuned. My guess is we’re going to hear about another conference call happening, within the next 24 hours. They’re going to have to start all over again.
The Democrats end up being a casualty of the early election season. They opened their mouths too loud and too long to survive events as they developed. And every one of them developed against them, and their claims.