Informed Speculation

This is the kind of news from Iraq that I like to hear:

The Iraqi government removed the country’s two most senior police commanders from their posts on Tuesday, in the first broad move against the top leadership of Iraq’s unruly special police forces.

The two generals had led Iraq’s special police commandos and its public order brigade, both widely criticized as being heavily infiltrated by Shiite militias. Their removal comes at a crucial time for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has come under intense American pressure to purge Iraq’s security forces of the militias and death squads that operate within their ranks.

Iraqi politicians, both Shiite and Sunni, have grown increasingly anxious in recent weeks that eroding public and Congressional support for the war in the United States might prompt a major shift in American policy, particularly if the November midterm elections bring gains for the Democrats.

Senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a visit to Baghdad earlier this month, have issued stark warnings to the Maliki government of growing American impatience, especially at the government’s failure to stop the scourge of death squads operating with the knowledge or support of the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.

For Mr. Maliki, these concerns have taken on a keen personal edge, exposed Monday when the White House revealed that Mr. Maliki asked President Bush in a telephone call whether there was any truth to rumors that the Americans had plans to replace him “if certain things don’t happen within two months,” in the words of Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow.

Mr. Snow said that Mr. Bush reassured Mr. Maliki of American support.

The American military also applied pressure to militia networks on Tuesday. Iraqi and American troops arrested a senior aide to Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite cleric. The aide, whom the military did not name but who was identified by a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, was arrested on suspicion of having directed kidnappings, killings and torture of Sunnis and Shiites, and of attacking Americans.

Mr. Maliki will also have to consider the criticisms of senior American military commanders who, in background briefings with American reporters in recent weeks, have spoken with exasperation about the government’s failure to tackle issues that have exhausted public confidence among Iraqis — above all the virtual impunity with which Shiite and Sunni death squads allowed to operate.

The Prime Minister is perhaps beginning to see the light…