Needlenose

Given that it used to be the near-daily posting fare at this site, I suppose I should feel some guilt over not paying more attention to the latest twists and turns of internal Iraqi politics — specifically, the ongoing machinations regarding a possible status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States.

But how worked up should I get when so little actually changes?  For instance, when I last checked in on the surprising (to most observers) intransigence of the Iraqi government in the negotiations nearly two months ago, I wrote:

Isn’t that a classic haggling technique in any society?  Let the other side know you’re oh-so-close to a deal, encourage them to make a few concessions to close the gap… and just as they do and reach for the pen, pull back and say, “Wait, there’s one more thing you need to agree to.”

You’d almost think they’re having fun toying with the Bushites at this point.

Judging from news stories yesterday and today, that’s still where we are.

From the Associated Press today:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dug in his heels Monday on the future of the U.S. military in Iraq, insisting that all foreign soldiers leave the country by a specific date in 2011 and rejecting legal immunity for American troops.

. . . Last week, U.S. and Iraqi officials said the two sides agreed tentatively to a schedule that includes a broad pullout of combat troops by the end of 2011 with the possibility that a residual U.S. force might stay behind to continue training and advising Iraqi security services.

But al-Maliki’s remarks indicated his government was not satisfied with that arrangement and wants all foreign troops gone by the end of 2011.

. . . President Bush has long resisted a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, even under strong pressure from an American public distressed by U.S. deaths and discouraged by the length of the war that began in 2003.

Last month, however, Bush reversed course and agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing troops home, based on Iraq’s ability to provide for its own security. But the Iraqis insisted they want a specific schedule.

“We find this to be too vague,” a close al-Maliki aide told The Associated Press on Monday. “We don’t want the phrase ‘time horizons.’ We are not comfortable with that phrase,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Another top al-Maliki aide, also speaking on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the Iraqi government had “stopped talking about the withdrawal of combat troops. We just talk about withdrawals,” including trainers and logistics troops.

The AP story carries a tone of partial disbelief that Maliki and his anonymous aides could actually mean what they say, suggesting on one hand that “al-Maliki is playing to a domestic audience” and “seeking to bolster his nationalist credentials ahead of provincial elections,” but also acknowledging (appropriately, in my opinion) that “The prime minister’s strong statements in support of an end to immunity and for a firm withdrawal timetable would make it difficult for him to accept an agreement that falls short of his public demands.”

I think the better analysis of what’s going on came from the AP’s Robert Reid in a story I analyzed here a month ago:

With the talks bogged down, the Iraqis sensed desperation by the Americans to wrap up a deal quickly before the presidential campaign was in full swing.

“Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Maliki’s statements today, and the associated leaks from his advisers, seem like the “squeeze” is continuing — and I’m not surprised.  When I noticed the recent stream of news stories (nearly all driven by Iraqi government sources) claiming a troop agreement was near, I wondered when this other shoe would fall.

Isn’t that a classic haggling technique in any society?  Let the other side know you’re oh-so-close to a deal, encourage them to make a few concessions to close the gap… and just as they do and reach for the pen, pull back and say, “Wait, there’s one more thing you need to agree to.”

You’d almost think they’re having fun toying with the Bushites at this point.

To say the least, it’s been an interesting weekend for anyone following political developments involving the United States and Iraq. As if Barack Obama’s post-primaries trip to Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq wasn’t enough, we had Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki issuing a surprisingly explicit endorsement of Obama’s proposed timetable for withdrawing American combat troops:

Maliki: . . . U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic.

This was followed by pressure from the Bushites to issue an unconvincing denial, but Robert Reid of the Associated Press thinks he knows what’s really going on:

The Iraqi prime minister’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Baghdad’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission.

. . . Already, the Iraqi strategy has succeeded in persuading the White House to agree to a “general time horizon” for removing U.S. troops — long a goal of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

. . . In the past, the Iraqis would have bowed to American pressure. This time, they saw an option in Obama, a longtime critic of the war. They could press for a short-term agreement with the administration and take their chances with a new president — Obama or McCain.

. . . “Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Wow. It’s hard to imagine the words “Let’s squeeze them” coming from a weak puppet like Maliki — or, at least, the Maliki that’s frequently been portrayed not just in the media but on progressive blogs. As Abu Aardvark wrote today, “I know that I’m not the only one who has generally assumed that Maliki and most of the ruling elite preferred McCain’s vision of endless, unconditional American military support.”

Readers here are a fortunate exception, as I accurately picked up signs several weeks ago that the Iraqi government would “prefer to deal with someone sane Barack Obama rather than another Republican president reading from the neocon playbook,” and suggested that we “consider what more Iraqis might do to make their preferences known between now and November.”

I think that the key mistake many observers (perhaps including Abu Aardvark et al.) make is that there are only two sides to the Iraqi situation: the U.S. occupation and those who ally with it, and the “resistance” (Sunni, Sadrist, or whatever) that takes up arms against it. They forget that the government Maliki represents wasn’t created by the Americans — it came about following popular elections demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who also established the coalition to which Maliki belongs and lent his considerable prestige to ensure its victory. And Sistani probably didn’t go through all that trouble just to be known as the guy who rubber-stamped a permanent U.S. occupation.

Back in Febuary 2004, Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post wrote a profile of Sistani that has long influenced my writings on Iraq; it describes the grand ayatollah as primarily motivated by memories of 1920 — when Shiites rebelled directly against the British, and were rewarded with 80 years of Sunni/secular domination — and determined not to let his followers miss this opportunity.

It’s always seemed to me that his solution was to cooperate initially with the U.S. invasion, use the American military as a contractor of sorts to help cement a Shiite-led government’s power, then nudge us aside when the task was more or less complete. Maliki’s newfound spine, if anything, just means that they think that time is drawing closer.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

(Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, demonstrating the “separation
of mosque and state” in Baghdad last weekend.)

Allow me to belatedly join the rest of the Iraq blogosphere in noting this development, in this case as reported by the Washington Post:

Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday that his government would not sign an agreement governing the future role of U.S. troops in Iraq unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.

The statement was the strongest demand yet by a senior Iraqi official for the two governments to set specific dates for the departure of U.S. forces. Speaking to reporters in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said his government was “impatiently waiting” for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“There should not be any permanent bases in Iraq unless these bases are under Iraqi control,” Rubaie said, referring to negotiations over a bilateral agreement governing the future U.S. military role in Iraq. The agreement, if approved, would go into effect when a U.N. mandate expires in December.

“We would not accept any memorandum of understanding with [the U.S.] side that has no obvious and specific dates for the foreign troops’ withdrawal from Iraq,” Rubaie said.

Speaking of belated recognition, observers such as Eric Martin, Matt Duss, Kevin Drum, Spencer Ackerman, and Juan Cole all note the importance of Rubaie’s statement coming immediately after a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. When the drumbeat of SOFA criticism began a month and a half ago, I think it was just yours truly who not only identified it but tied it to a similar conversation between Sistani and prime minister Maliki in Najaf.

The Associated Press version of this story includes an interesting tidbit:

Al-Maliki has instructed his negotiating team to harden its position in recent days because he thinks the Bush administration is eager to sign an agreement before the fall elections, giving Iraq the chance to win a better deal, said a senior Iraqi Shiite official knowledgeable about the talks.

An alternate take that I’ve promoted here is that Maliki & Co. would just as soon run out the clock on the Bushites and strike a deal with a hoped-for Obama administration next year, but playing carrot-and-stick with demands the Bush regime will find hard to accept may be one way of achieving that goal.

Conflicting with that interpretation, though, the AP reporters go on to outline a deal that Dick Cheney might find acceptable:

Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite lawmaker and a prominent official in the prime minister’s party, told The Associated Press that Iraq was linking the proposed timeline to the ongoing return of various provinces to Iraqi control.

. . . The proposal, as outlined by al-Adeeb, is phrased in a way that would allow Iraqi officials to tell the Iraqi public that it includes a specific timeline for a U.S. withdrawal, with specific time periods mentioned.

However, it also would provide the United States some flexibility on timing because the dates of the provincial handovers are not set.

But then again, Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times had a chat of her own with a Maliki aide and reported yesterday:

Haider Abadi, a Dawa member and political insider, said Maliki did not believe Iraqis should be pressured into making long-term arrangements with an outgoing administration.

“No one can guess which way U.S. policy will go after the election,” he said in a telephone interview. “We cannot go on discussing an agreement that may never materialize. There is too much at stake.”

. . . Abadi said the government was proposing that the U.S. finish handing over responsibility for security in all 18 provinces within six months and pull out most of its troops in two to three years. Nine of the provinces are already under Iraqi control.

So I guess we’ll have to see which analysis is correct — that is, whether the Iraqis are trying to carve out the wiggle room imagined reported by the AP, or taking the tougher stand I’ve described.

Ultimately, it’s a question of which view of the Iraqi government is correct. The Bushites are spreading the word that Maliki, Rubaie, et al. are just trying to placate public opinion in Iraq, but when the crunch comes they’ll give Dubya what he wants because they need U.S. military protection to stay in power — and in fact, many on the left (including Attackerman and E-Mart, among many others) share this view.

However, I think they’ve got it the wrong way around. As the head of a government installed in large part though the will of Ayatollah Sistani (and against the wishes of the U.S. occupation), it’s part of Maliki’s job to placate the Bushites… but he has to obey Sistani. And if Sistani refuses to allow a deal that legitimizes the occupation indefinitely, then I don’t think there’s going to be one.

This story in the New York Times has already been widely noted across the blogiverse this morning:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

The initial reaction can be summed up as varying shades of “Yep, this is the imperialism we were expecting.” And the response is certainly justifiable; favorable business deals under the shadow of imposing force are how “protection” rackets have functioned since the dawn of time.

An important caveat (noted by Andrew Tilghman at TPM Muckraker), though, appears midway through the NYT article:

The no-bid deals are structured as service contracts. The companies will be paid for their work, rather than offered a license to the oil deposits. As such, they do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding. The legislation has been stalled by disputes among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties over revenue sharing and other conditions.

A service contract approach, rather than so-called production sharing agreements (PSAs) that would give foreign companies a share of the oil itself, is exactly how liberals have called for Iraq to handle its resource development. With no PSAs, and no much-desired (by the Bushites) oil law to support a more rapacious generous approach to Western involvement in Iraq’s fields, these contracts could be seen as a bone thrown by the Shiite government in Baghdad to placate the U.S. for a few months until Barack Obama a new administration comes to Washington, DC.

This may especially be the case when one considers the resistance by the Maliki government to approving a long-term security agreement that would prolong the occupation. Given the hints of hardball tactics by Bush/Cheney et al. to get their way, a few small oil contracts could be an attempt by Maliki & Co. to ease the pressure. As the bards sang forty years ago:

If you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste…

In other words, a little token favor in the face of unrestrained vice might be excused as a necessary evil. We’ll have to see what next steps follow these contracts (particularly in terms of the so-called Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA) to determine whether the Iraqi government is in fact trying to buy time from the devils they’re forced to deal with, or whether they’ve joined the latter as full partners in crime.

From the Washington Post yesterday:

President Bush said Wednesday he is confident the United States will reach an agreement on the role of U.S. forces in Iraq, calling opposition to a U.S. proposal part of the “noise” of a freer Iraqi society.

Appearing at a news conference here with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bush said that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “appreciates our presence there” and suggested that much of the Iraqi opposition to a status-of-forces agreement is based on inaccurate media reports and misunderstandings. “There’s all kinds of noise in their system and our system,” Bush said. “. . . I think we’ll get the agreement done.”

Uhh, don’t look now, Shrubster, but even Maliki is starting to make “noise,” as the Associated Press reports this morning:

Iraq’s prime minister said Friday that talks with the U.S. on proposals for a long-term security pact have reached an impasse over objections that Iraq’s sovereignty is at stake, but held out hope that negotiators could still reach a compromise plan.

In his strongest comments yet on the debate, Nouri al-Maliki echoed concern by Iraqi lawmakers that the U.S. proposals would give Washington too much political and military leverage on Iraqi affairs.

“The first drafts presented left us at a dead end and deadlock,” he told reporters in Amman, Jordan. “So, we left these first drafts and the negotiations will continue with new ideas until the sides reach a formula that preserves Iraq’s sovereignty.”

. . . “Any agreement that infringes on Iraq’s sovereignty and its components will be dismissed and will not be acceptable,” he added, promising any deal would be presented to Iraq’s parliament for final approval.

. . . An aide to Iraq’s pre-eminent Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged negotiators to protect the national interest during a Friday sermon in the holy city of Karbala.

“Iraq’s sovereignty and economy must be protected,” Ahmed al-Safi told worshippers. “The Iraqi negotiators must be up to the responsibility and should have a unified point of view.”

As I was saying on Wednesday, I don’t think Maliki and his allies are bluffing. They know what the Bushites are trying to shove down their throats, and with only seven months until a hoped-for Obama administration takes over, they’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel — and a chance to stand up to the Americans who have browbeaten them for so long.

Then again, Dubya and Dick Cheney aren’t exactly guys who enjoy losing, nor are they shy about using every underhanded trick they can think of to get their way. So we’ll have to see what hardball tactics they have left in their repertoire before this is settled.

By now, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about this story in the Washington Post today:

High-level negotiations over the future role of the U.S. military in Iraq have turned into an increasingly acrimonious public debate, with Iraqi politicians denouncing what they say are U.S. demands to maintain nearly 60 bases in their country indefinitely.

Top Iraqi officials are calling for a radical reduction of the U.S. military’s role here after the U.N. mandate authorizing its presence expires at the end of this year. Encouraged by recent Iraqi military successes, government officials have said that the United States should agree to confine American troops to military bases unless the Iraqis ask for their assistance, with some saying Iraq might be better off without them.

“The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq,” said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament’s foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “If we can’t reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, ‘Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don’t need you here anymore.’ “

. . . The American negotiators also called for continued control over Iraqi airspace and the right to refuel planes in the air, according to Askari, positions he said added to concerns that the United States was preparing to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran.

“We rejected the whole thing from the beginning,” said Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a senior lawmaker from the Supreme Council. “In my point of view, it would just be a new occupation with an Iraqi signature.”

. . . Assuming that violence in Iraq will continue to decrease, politicians such as Saghir have begun discussing another option: asking the U.S. military to leave Iraq.

“Maybe the Iraqi government will say: ‘Hey, the security situation is better. We don’t need any more troops in Iraq,’ ” he said.Â

This is the latest step in the orchestrated groundswell of Iraqi complaints to U.S. media outlets about the proposed security deal that began with associates of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani leaking rumors of his increasing unease with the occupation a few weeks ago. Â

At the very least, it’s posturing to improve the Iraqi government’s negotiating position regarding the potential agreement. Â Some say it’s barely even that — they think Maliki & Co. are (still) the Bushites’ loyal puppets, and are just making noises to placate popular opinion at home before eventually giving Dubya and Dick Cheney most of what they want.

As longtime readers we haven’t chased away yet know, I’m not so sure about that. Â I’ve written before about the ultimate eviction of U.S. troops being part of the long-term plan of the Shiite hierarchy, and the rhetoric the Shiite pols are ratcheting up at the moment seems difficult to back away from — rather than setting the stage for a reversal, they appear to be almost painting themselves into a corner.

It wouldn’t be the first time, of course. Â The image at the top of this post is a billboard the Shiite coalition had put up as they celebrated their Sistani-fueled electoral victory in early 2005. Â Replacing a previous pitch for Iraqis to vote (on the right), the new billboard showed what looked like tank tracks on an empty stretch of land, with the legend, “They are leaving, and we are staying.”

So far, we haven’t left. Â The question, though, is whether that’s because the former exiles who make up the current government are inextricably bound to us (out of love or necessity), or whether they’ve simply viewed us as contractors who needed to put in some overtime to subdue their enemies — a task they may now see as being nearly complete. Â We may find out in the next few months.

ABC News reports from Iraq this afternoon:

Thousands of Iraqis filled the streets of Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood this afternoon to demonstrate against a long-term United States presence in Iraq, the first significant anti-American rally in the massive Shiite slum in more than two years.

As American helicopters hovered overhead, young and old men and even children flowed out of their weekly Friday prayers and began burning American flags and chanting “no, no to America” and “yes, yes to independence.”

The residents carried posters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army has fought against U.S. soldiers and who is accused of carrying out much of the violence here. Two days ago Sadr called on supporters to rally against an agreement currently under discussion that could allow the U.S. to build permanent bases in Iraq and grant American citizens in Iraq immunity from prosecution.

. . . Sheikh Mohannad Al-Gazawi, the imam who led Friday prayers during 105-degree heat, told attendees that the agreement “aims at paving the way for a 99-year period of American control of Iraq.”

. . . The protestors carried signs that called the long-term agreement “worse than the occupation itself” and a “war declaration against the Iraqi people.”

. . . “The reasons for the peaceful demonstration were not made obvious,” the U.S. military said in a statement.

Which goes to show that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt — it flows through the Green Zone in Baghdad as well. But it’s not just Sadr and his supporters who are unhappy, as the New York Times notes in a story on their website:

Aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, have also expressed concerns about the negotiations . . . [and] some other Iraqi lawmakers are raising questions about the timing of the deal.

One American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqis appeared to be unwilling to make any concessions before the country’s provincial elections later this year to avoid seeming, to Iraqi voters, — to be too accommodating to the occupying forces. “They are playing hardball right now,” the official said.

The recalcitrant Iraqi politicians include some of our erstwhile closest allies:

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said many Iraqi leaders were being kept in the dark about the security pact, which he thinks should not be completed until after the American presidential elections in November.

. . . Even one of the prime minister’s closest allies, Ali Adeeb, a senior member of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party, expressed similar reservations.

“This agreement is between Iraq and the United States president, and the American policy is not clear,” Mr. Adeeb said. “Therefore, we can wait until the American elections to deal with a Democratic or Republican president.”

Get the feeling that maybe they’d prefer to deal with someone sane Barack Obama rather than another Republican president reading from the neocon playbook?

The Washington Post noted this morning that “the war in Iraq has moved back to center stage in the presidential election,” but that “the war is more a wild card than a slam dunk for either side.” That’s even more true if you consider what more Iraqis might do to make their preferences known between now and November.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

After seemingly disappearing from the scene for several months, Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani may have decided it’s time to assert himself again. Days after an apparent leak to the Associated Press that the aging cleric was expressing private approval of armed resistance to the U.S. occupation, the Iranian Press TV network reports:

Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has strongly objected to a ‘security accord’ between the US and Iraq.

The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with “the US occupiers” as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said.

The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday.

The remarks were made amid reports that the Iraqi government might sign a long-term framework agreement with the United States, under which Washington would be allowed to set up permanent military bases in the country and US citizens would be granted immunity from legal prosecution in the country.

So far the Iranian agency is the only media outlet reporting this, but since I anticipated the possibility of this development on Thursday ["It’s notable that Sistani’s allies made a concerted effort to leak this news the day after the grand ayatollah met with prime minister Maliki, during which he likely conveyed his thoughts on what kind of agreement with the U.S. (if any) would pass muster with the marjaiya"], I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be accurate.

As I wrote elsewhere yesterday, Sistani’s goal is that when the dust settles from the fall of Saddam, Iraq will be a Shiite-governed country — which includes not being under the thumb of the United States. But remembering that in 1920 the Shiites openly fought an occupation and wound up subjugated by the Sunnis who allied with it, he’s pursued a strategy of trying to outmaneuver and outlast the U.S. rather than rebelling directly.

Now, though, he’s faced with a Bush administration whose time is running out, and which is probably pulling out all the stops to browbeat the Maliki government into signing a long-term agreement. As a result, the grand ayatollah may have recognized that the time has come to take a firmer stand… or at least threaten to do so.

Hopefully, for the old man’s sake, Dubya/Cheney & Co. won’t view the “as long as I’m alive” part of Sistani’s alleged statement as a loophole to be exploited.

From the Associated Press today:

It’s notable that Sistani’s allies made a concerted effort to leak this news the day after the grand ayatollah met with prime minister Maliki, during which he likely conveyed his thoughts on what kind of agreement with the U.S. (if any) would pass muster with the marjaiya.

Substantively, though, in many ways this news shouldn’t come as a surprise. Sistani has never been willing to endorse the U.S. occupation, even as he was letting American troops level much of his home city of Najaf in order to flush Moqtada al-Sadr out of the Imam Ali shrine in 2004. And conversely, no matter how (literally) bloody the rivalry between Sistani’s allies/followers and Sadr’s has been, the grand ayatollah has repeatedly intervened in disputes to support or even rescue Mookie when the latter’s back was against the wall.

I don’t think this news story is a move to “counter the populist appeal” of Sadr, as the AP story and some blogger commentaries have theorized — if Sistani wants to burnish his anti-occupation street cred with the Iraqi people, I doubt he’ll do it through anonymous leaks to the Associated Press. Instead, it seems more logical that he’s trying to signal to an American audience (namely, the Bushites) not to push their luck too far with regard to Sadr.

And it’s probably a signal he wants the Sadrists to notice, as an “I’ve got your back” gesture to help grease their current truce with the Maliki government… all in service of keeping Iraq’s Shiite factions, if not on the same page, at least not outwardly at each other’s throats. Which, of course, has been Ayatollah Sistani’s primary goal for almost as long as there’s been an occupation to oppose.