Mahdis Fracturing, US Trying To Heal Them?
Ed Morrissey
The Mahdi Army, once a large structure ready to do Moqtada al-Sadr's bidding, has fractured under the weight of the US surge strategy. Hundreds of Mahdi commanders now take orders directly from Iran, where they have gone to train while the US and Iraqi security plan makes the kind of progress that threatens their political stranglehold on Baghdad: ...
Apparently, though, the US feels somewhat conflicted about the disintegration of the Mahdis. Yesterday, American military forces released a key Sadr aide in what looks like an attempt to reach some sort of reconciliation with the cleric -- again: ...
Democrats Undone Over Iraq
Ed Morrissey
William Butler Yeats wrote that "the center does not hold" in his famous poem, "The Second Coming", and Congress' new majority looks to prove it. The Democrats now face uprisings on both right and left flanks over the latest version of Cut and Run making its way to the House floor, and the prospects of passage even where filibusters cannot block votes appears very dim indeed:
Representative Dan Boren is a Democrat, but after visiting Iraq last week he announced a decision that puts him at odds with his party’s leaders: he intends to vote against their plan to set a deadline for troops to leave Iraq.
“A timeline, in effect, is cutting off the funds,” said Mr. Boren, a conservative second-term lawmaker whose territory covers the eastern swath of Oklahoma, from the bottom of Kansas to the top of Texas. “That is not the solution.”
His views have barely caused a ripple in his home district, but the House Democratic leadership has been working to keep Mr. Boren’s views from spreading through the party’s jittery conservative wing. At the same time, the leaders are trying to persuade liberals to support the legislation, even though it does not end the war nearly fast enough for their liking. ...
The Democrats thought they rode to power on a wave of anti-war sentiment, but they have discovered that their victory had much more to do with Republican failures than with Democratic platforms. Most of their new members come from center-right districts where Democratic messages about corruption and abuses resonated -- but where they see Congress' role in Iraq as limited at best. Boren represents a typical Democratic pickup district in that respect.
Now that the Democratic leadership has gone on record as wanting to limit options for victory in Iraq, Nancy Pelosi and company find that these new representatives will not play along with them. ...
Democrats In Disarray
John Hinderaker
The wheels started to come off for the Democrats' leadership in the House today. They had to pull their unconstitutional bill to grant "voting rights" to the District off the floor after they were out-maneuvered by the Republicans, who offered a motion to repeal the District's gun control law. A number of Democrats would have supported that measure, which is anathema to the leadership and most of the party's base.
Drudge says that Steny Hoyer was "seen yelling at staff on [the House] floor," while Nancy Pelosi was "absent because she is desperately searching for Iraq supplemental votes." The D.C. bill is a sideshow, of course; where the Democrats are seriously is disarray is on the war. The Associated Press reports: Dems Struggle to Unite Caucus on Iraq: ...
