What is Prime Minister Maliki up to with his seeming endorsement of Obama’s 16 month withdrawal timetable, followed by a quick backtrack by his spokesman? The most persuasive answer I’ve seen comes in this Associated Press analysis by Robert Reid. In good AP style, his first few paragraphs sum up his thesis:

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.

The goal is not necessarily to push out the Americans quickly, but instead give Iraqis a major voice in how long U.S. troops stay and what they will do while still there.

It also is designed to refurbish the nationalist credentials of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his political survival to the steadfast support of President Bush. Now, an increasingly confident Iraqi government seems to be undermining long-standing White House policies on Iraq.

In other words, Maliki is not really trying to push U.S. troops out by mid-2010, as Senator Obama proposes. In fact he’s being careful to say that a mid-2010 departure is a “hope”—not a firm demand. (His spokesman explained today that “the government did not endorse a fixed date.”) He is playing politics—Iraqi politics. The fact that it’s having an impact on U.S. politics is probably an unintended byproduct from Maliki’s viewpoint.

There are some other interesting articles on Iraq out today. 

USAToday notes that attacks with Iranian-supplied EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators)-the most lethal explosives our troops face-are down 70% over the past three months. Most likely this is due to the success of the joint Iraqi-American offensive against the Mahdi Army and Shiite "Special Groups"-not to a change of heart in Tehran. "U.S. commanders are cautious in describing the decline in armor-piercing bombs in Iraq, saying there is no evidence Iran is backing off support for Shiite militants there." 

In another sign of continuing improvements, The Australian reports on General Petraeus’s comments about how Al Qaeda is shifting its focus from Iraq to Afghanistan: "He said US intelligence about al-Qa’ida’s changed focus was not ‘solid gold’, but said fewer foreign fighters were going to Iraq; they were instead going to Afghanistan and Pakistan. From a peak of 80 to 100 foreign fighters entering Iraq each month, the total had dropped to as low as 20 a month, he said." 

USAToday points out the vital role that U.S. advisers embedded in Iraqi units play in achieving such remarkable progress: "Recent evidence suggests that although the Iraqi military has made enormous progress, it is still dependent on small teams of American advisers who can rein in overly aggressive Iraqi commanders, call in U.S. airstrikes and help coordinate basic supplies such as food, rifle-cleaning kits and even printer cartridges." Correspondent Charles Levinson notes that a key turning point in the battle of Basra occurred when U.S. advisers called in air strikes to support embattled Iraqi troops. Moreover: "The lone Iraqi division in Basra that had no U.S. advisers crumbled as soon as the battle started." What Levinson doesn’t mention is that in order to maintain all those embedded advisors in dangerous conditions, the U.S. must have a substantial "footprint" in Iraq-not only logisticians, air crews, medics, and others who act in direct support of the advisers but also ground troops to protect that support structure. 

Robert Novak suggests that the Obama campaign is aware of how extensive the needs are. The candidate has talked about retaining a "residual force" even after pulling out all U.S. combat brigades by 2010. "How big would this more or less permanent "residual" force be?" Novak writes. "Obama did not say, but advisers leaked that it could reach 50,000." That, of course, is far higher than Obama’s antiwar supporters envision. And no one can know today whether that number will be adequate in 2010. If it is, however, it will be because of the success of the surge, which Obama opposed. Novak mentions that the 50,000 figure is derived from a study by the Center for a New American Security. What he doesn’t mention is that the CNAS experts-like Obama-proposed short-circuiting the surge and reducing down to 50,000 troops immediately. If that had happened in the past year, the likely result would have been disaster. 

Recent experience in Iraq should make even Democrats who opposed the war a little more humble in their assessments. They should admit that they were wrong about the surge, applaud its success, and vow not to do anything to undermine the ongoing progress. Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton’s former special counsel, makes precisely those points in the Washington Times today. However, as Congressman Pete Hoekstra notes in the Washington Post, the mainstream Democratic response has been to disparage the surge, deny its success, and stick with irresponsible calls for an immediate pullout.