Nothing like indicting yourself.

The Ny Times begins it’s printing of the secret memo by the following blurb:

“Following is the text of a Nov. 8 memorandum prepared for cabinet-level officials by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and his aides on the National Security Council. The five-page document, classified secret, was read and transcribed by The New York Times.”

What part of “secret” don’t these people don’t understand?

Nevertheless, while this flames my arse, this isn’t the usual leak designed to make the Administration look bad – indeed it came from within the administration – although most likely a mole in the State Department.

The memo was written by NSA Steven Hadley and is a report on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki citing some of the problems he is having and some potential fixes that could be employed
On the surface it appears to be a report card – and a wake up call for Maliki to get his act together. There is actually nothing surprising or earth shattering. But Maliki is being taken to the woodshed and that’s the crux of the matter. Order needs to be the point of the day. However, Maliki can’t seem to get a handle on the situation.
Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse isn’t holding back:

“If the Prime Minister cannot even control his own armed forces, how much power does he really have? Couple this weakness with his accommodation of both the Mahdi Militia and the even larger Badr Brigades and it may be time to start asking why we should prop someone up who doesn‚Äôt have a leg to stand on in the first place?

Good intentions don’t mean squat. We have heard this empty suit of a Prime Minister talk for more than a year about what needs to be done to curb the insurgency, bring the militias to heel, clean up the rampant corruption in the ministries (where taxpayer monies are being shoveled down a black hole), affect a political settlement that includes a sharing of oil revenues with all parties, and bring the Saddamites who terrorized the Iraqi people for more than a quarter of a century to justice.

He has accomplished none of it. He has barely started most of it. He has, in fact, been an obstacle to achieving many of those goals. He has tried to play both ends against the middle with al-Sadr on one side and the Americans on the other and has satisfied neither and disgusted both. His efforts to reform the Interior Ministry to ferret out the independent death squads and militia members who have infiltrated the Iraqi Police Force have been for naught. And his efforts to unite the country politically have consisted largely of grandiose rhetoric with little in the way of concrete proposals that could be the basis for negotiations with the Sunnis and Kurds.”

He’s right of course, but reforming Maliki isn’t the only problem we are facing at stablizing Iraq. I’m going to harp this until the cows comes to roost. We need to get more troops in there and quick. But not just “boots on the ground”, but real and substantial involvement. We need to round up the trouble makers (or take them out). In short, we take off the gloves.

UPDATE I:¬† Speaking of trouble makers, Al-Sadr is throwing a hissy fit over Maliki’s visit with Bush in Jordan.¬† As I said, how this thug is being allowed to exists burns my arse.