Are Democrats influencing Maliki to hurry it up?« Thread Started on Jan 22, 2007, 1:39am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sunday, January 21, 2007Are Democrats influencing Maliki to hurry it up?Debating Bush's war policy is helping the situation in Iraq, not hurting it.One day after 25 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq, six more troops were killed on Sunday: 3,000 of the 20,000 soldiers involved in Bush's troop escalation plan arrived in Iraq yesterday.On the home front, if the Democrats take back the White House in 2008, it is likely that troops will be withdrawn immediately. The Maliki government in Baghdad has been paying close attention to the debate between Bush and Democratic lawmakers. Could that added pressure on his government be what influenced Maliki to abandon al-Sadr this weekend?:Iraq's prime minister has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday. In a desperate bid to fend off an all-out American offensive, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Friday ordered the 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two- month boycott of the government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.read at source> http://thebluestate.typepad.com/my_webl ... ats_i.html