Sadr-ites back withdrawal timetable

According to Washington Post’s Qassim Abdul-Zahra Sadr’s allies in the Iraqi legislature are threatening to leave the government if the Iraq government doesn’t support a withdrawal timetable for US troops;

Iraqi Cabinet ministers allied to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened Wednesday to quit the government to protest the prime minister’s lack of support for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, according to a statement.

Such a pullout by the very bloc that put Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in office could collapse his already perilously weak government. The threat comes two months into a U.S. effort to pacify Baghdad in order to give al-Maliki’s government room to function.

Al-Sadr’s political committee issued the statement a day after al-Maliki rejected an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal.

“We see no need for a withdrawal timetable. We are working as fast as we can,” al-Maliki told reporters during his four-day trip to Japan, where he signed loan agreements for redevelopment projects in Iraq.

“To demand the departure of the troops is a democratic right and a right we respect. What governs the departure at the end of the day is how confident we are in the handover process,” he said, adding that “achievements on the ground” would dictate how long American troops remain.

I guess that’s a bit treasonous because the Sadr-ists are just anxious to get the Americans out of their way so they can seize the government by force, since the electoral thing isn’t happening for them.

It also indicates that Sadr is sweating the American destruction of his forces in Iraq. They’re in a hurry to get us out before there is no militia with which to take over the government. They at least want a timetable they can use to raise the morale of the militias instead of sending them into the US meatgrinder.

Maybe Pelosi and Murtha can go over there to buck up the Sadr troops. Well, what’s left of them.

Category: Politics, Terror War