Firing Wildly

by digby

Josh Marshall wonders the same thing I did last week:

And does this perhaps get us toward an answer to our earlier question, Why the Rush? We know that Maliki is highly dependent on al Sadr and the Mahdi Army (the folks the ‘surge’ is supposed to crush). If it’s really true that Saddam was handed over to MA fighters to be executed rather than Interior Ministry officials, was that the rush? Did al Sadr and Co. make Maliki an offer he couldn’t refuse? Did they demand that Saddam be turned over to them — and now — for execution? Was that why he was pulling so many strings and cutting so many corners?

In my earlier post I quoted a passage from Juan Cole’s analysis which makes me think that Maliki wasn’t exactly coerced.

Here’s my question. If that’s the case, and The McCain Republicans and Connecticuts for Lieberman’s are going to send in 20,000 more troops to “secure” the country, doesn’t that mean Americans will be fighting the personal army of the prime minister of Iraq? The same prime minister who was duly elected with all those fabulous purple fingers?

I hate to get all literal about this and upset Tony Blankley, but shouldn’t we at least know whether this escalation is designed to kill insurgents/terrorists/extremists or make war on the current government of Iraq? And is there any difference?

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