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Things have gotten totally out of hand regarding the Sadr/Mahdi army issue.
If Maliki does not follow through by the end of December, based on what the US supposedly told him to accomplish, then I to am going to change directions as how I view the Iraqi situation.
It is one thing, and reasonable IMHO, to expect many Saddamist, al Qaeda, and splinter radical Sunni religious groups to be hard to ferret out, and another to avoid eliminating a number of well organized and VISIBLE militias.
Maliki had better start jumping through the friggen hoops soon.
Perhaps it is time for a number of us to unite and ask Jim to draft a letter/email to send to say Tony Snow that would represent the vast majority of Free Republic and obviously associative web/blog sites on this issue.
Most of us have shown great restraints in how we share our feelings on this issue. But surely the time is running out on future hopes of things actually getting better.
The time is long overdue for these Iraqi politicians to stop screwing off and doing something about this mess.
The Iraqi army and police are supposed to be eliminating all causes of sectarian violence. Do they need to scrap a huge portion of those we supposedly vetted and then trained.
Have to get some shut eye. Been a long day at work.

The Iraqi police especially in Baghdad is very infiltrated.

The Iraqi Army is still deciently non-sectarian, but I see signs that Sadr is trying to change that.

Allawi gave an interview this week and was quite blunt that Iraq really does not have much time left. The US is going to have to take decisive action of some kind very soon or we lose Iraq and the entire region to Iran and al-Qaeda.

Another point to be made is that the Brits have gone into total force protection mode down there. The Islamist mafia, Iranian intelligence, and oil smugglers (who are oft-times all the same people) have veto power over all that goes on in the south. Trust me on this one.