US 'offering' to keep troops in Iraq? More like begging for permission to stay.

The Associated Press reported late yesterday (citing the ever-popular White Houses "sources" – that is, officials probably authorized to speak and plant a message in the press but granted anonymity anyways) that the Obama administration is "offering" to keep 10,000 troops in Iraq in 2012, beyond the agreed deadline with the Iraqis to withdraw all troops.

While that word "offer" has been repeatedly used by US officials named and unnamed in recent months, a better word might be "pleading." US officials insist that Iran has been expanding contacts and assistance to some Shiite militias inside the country. Less often stated is the fact that Iraq never had the kind of national reconciliation needed for lasting domestic peace, and that Sunni militias appear to be on the move again.

A number of senior officers in the Iraqi Army appear eager for the extended presence of the US and the additional training and equipment that would mean. In addition, the ethnic Kurds, who hold a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq (carved out thanks to a US imposed no-fly zone against Saddam Hussein's forces following the first Gulf War), are lobbying for the US to stay.

But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been largely mum on the matter. A key to his shaky coalition are loyalists of Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army repeatedly targeted US forces while also participating in the country's sectarian civil war between 2005 and 2009. Sadr has warned of extended bloodshed if what he terms a US occupation is extended beyond the end of this year. Some small Sunni groups are also staunchly opposed to an extension.

Yesterday was a bloody reminder that while Iraq may be safer today than two years ago, sectarian violence continues to flare. At least two deadly blasts at Taji, a key oil pipeline hub just north of Baghdad, killed 37 people at a government building. The second blast was timed to kill and maim more people as they rushed to the assistance of those caught in the first, a tactic common in Iraq as elsewhere. Iraqi officials blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni insurgent group.

Hard-core Sunni insurgent groups view the Shiite-led government of Iraq as illegitimate. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's minority Sunni Arab community was privileged. The aftermath of his removal saw years of Sunni-Shiite score settling. Thousands of ex-officials,-soldiers, and-politicians were abducted and killed by shadowy death squads, many severely tortured before death. Tens of thousands more were killed in market blasts and roadside bombings. Those wounds have not yet healed in both communities.

On Monday, at least 10 people were killed in Baghdad and surrounding towns like Abu Ghraib. Security incidents ran the gamut from homemade bombs attached to the underside of civilian cars (rigged to blow when they're moved), to two suicide bombers, to the targeted assassination of a leader of the Awakening Movement and his wife. The so-called Awakening Movement is a group of Sunni insurgents who switched to the side of the US military and Iraqi government in exchange for promises of jobs and money a few years ago, and have been the target of reprisals ever since.

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