from SLATE, June 28:
The Los Angeles Times leads with word that U.S. troops will be focusing on rooting out al-Qaida in Iraq during their upcoming offensive operations this summer. U.S. commanders say this shift in strategy, which takes emphasis away from the initial stated goal of targeting Shiite militias and death squads in Baghdad, is in preparation for the withdrawal timeline that they see coming from Congress in the next few months. ...
U.S. officials in Iraq are increasingly becoming convinced that
militias are likely to reduce their attacks once a withdrawal timeline is established, but the opposite will be true for al-Qaida in Iraq. So, while insisting that Shiite militias are still a priority, U.S. troops will focus more on al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni militias. Notably, officials don't seem to be expecting any miracles, and instead say their goal is to create enough stability so that Iraqi forces can have some hope of success once the number of U.S. troops begins to decrease. The LAT gets extra credit today for noting something that might be obvious but is often lost in the coverage: "Despite its name, the extent of [al-Qaida in Iraq's] link to Osama bin Laden is unclear." < so the US decided to go with the Shiite option and forget more partition, Sunni/Shiite parity, and other options under consideration. The main change, if Iraq ever escapes its Hobbesian chaos, will thus be the switch from a Sunni tyranny (under Saddam) to a Shiite one (under name to be announced later) combined with a _de facto_ partition between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq. Some people on the left used to imply that the US had created death squads as part of an effort to reproduce its success in El Salvador (as if Iraqis and Salvadoreños couldn't create death squads on their own). The seeming decision by the US military to side with the Shiites and (seemingly) to conflate Sunnis with al-Qaida means that this theory is turning out to be true in practice: the US may not have _created_ the Shiite death-squads, but it is likely to rely on them more and more in the future. will Muqtada al-Sadr -- or one of his allies -- be the new Saddam. -- Jim Devine / "Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss" -- the Who.
