TWO TAKES ON MALIKI

THE AMBASSADOR:

U.S. ambassador rates Iraq progress as poor
By Leila Fadel McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, August 21, 2007

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. diplomat in Iraq on Tuesday called the country's political progress "extremely disappointing" and warned that support for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is not unlimited.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker's remarks to reporters were the harshest criticism yet by a Bush administration official of Maliki's government and may be a prelude to what he'll tell Congress in a report that he and Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, will give next month.
"The progress on the national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned — to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself," Crocker said.
"We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check."

THE GENERAL:

Maliki Faces Fresh Doubts, Tests
U.S. Troop Surge in Iraq Creates
Opportunity to Reconcile Divisions
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and GREG JAFFE
August 21, 2007; Page A4
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Army Chief of Staff George Casey, who spent several days last week meeting with top U.S. regional commanders here, said he was taken aback by the intensity of anti-Maliki sentiment among senior U.S. officers. "I heard more people talk about Maliki not making it through his full term in two days than I had heard in all of my previous time here," Gen. Casey said. "There's a frustration with his inability to be a reconciliation leader, and a fear that the momentum generated by the surge could just be frittered away."

Gen. Casey, who served as the top U.S commander here in 2005 and 2006, said the U.S. may have erred in believing that Mr. Maliki, with a lifetime of Shiite activism, would be willing or able to make political compromises with the country's Sunnis.

"It would be a huge shame if after all the military has accomplished with the surge we don't get a political accommodation," he said. "But I'm not optimistic."