The plan would be to try to forge a new and more effective Iraqi government coalition that would include the Sunnis, Kurds, and the Shias, while engineering a tilt within Maliki's Shia coalition away from Sadr and toward fellow Shiite leader Ayatollah Abdul Aziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its attendant Badr Brigade militia. (Hakim is scheduled to arrive in Washington next week on an official visit.) The Mahdi Army loyal to radical young Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr would continue to be the enemy. Washington would also engage Saudi Arabia and regional neighbors to encourage Sunni support for Maliki, and Syria and Iran would be pressured to limit their support for combatants.Sounds like a plan! Spencer and Matt are ... skeptical. One does wonder just how many efforts at American micromanagement of Iraqi political arrangements have to fail before anyone in charge decides this may be a futile endeavor. Perhaps it's stupid to wonder such a thing....Among the views advanced at the Veterans' Day weekend meeting was one seemingly at odds with the gist of the Hadley memo: This option, described to me as a fallback position supported by Cheney's office and elements of the National Security Council, would have the U.S. abandon the immediate goal of national reconciliation and instead pick a side -- the Shia. The "unleash the Shia" option would have the United States back a Shiite coalition that would include SCIRI leader Hakim and his Badr Brigades as the core of an Iraqi Army under the direct control of Prime Minister Maliki. Even as the United States sided with the Shia, Hadley's memo makes clear that the United States would at the same time press Maliki to distance himself from Sadr and his Mahdi army.
--Sam Rosenfeld
