As noted by Yours Truly after President Bush’s speech on Iraq the other night, a big reason that the “new” strategy won’t work is that the bad guys will simply wait until it plays itself out.
As if on cue, Leila Fadel and Zaineb Obeid of McClatchy Newspapers, which journo for journo may be doing the best work out of Iraq, report that:
“Mahdi Army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.
“Militia members say (militant anti-American cleric and militia leader Moqtada] Al-Sadr ordered them to stand down shortly after President George Bush’s announcement that the U.S. would send 17,500 more American troops to Baghdad to work alongside the Iraqi security forces.
“The decision by al-Sadr to lower his force’s profile in Baghdad will likely cut violence in the city and allow American forces to show quick results from their beefed up presence. But it is also unlikely in the long term to change the balance of power here. Mahdi Army militiamen say that while they remain undercover now, they are simply waiting for the security plan to end.”
More here.