Inter­est­ing words from Petraeus, attack­ing the Jus­tice and Account­abil­ity in his inter­view on the Times:

… the account­abil­ity and jus­tice com­mis­sion that replaced the for­mer de-Baathification com­mit­tee, those lead­ers seem­ingly hijack­ing the new organ­i­sa­tion with­out hav­ing been con­firmed as the lead­er­ship of it and being manip­u­lated by report­edly the Iran­ian Quds force .…

The Iran­ian agents Petraeus talked about above are replaced with “softer” Iran­ian agents, Al-Sumaria released the names of the newly “skinned” Jus­tice and Account­abil­ity Com­mis­sion, mem­bers are:

- 2x Kur­dis­tan Alliance — Kami­ran Rasool, Bakhtiar Omar..
– 2x INA — Mohamed Salem, Mehdi Saleh.
– 1x Sadr Mov. — Falah Shan­shal.
– 1x Dawa Party — Haidar Hanoun.
– 1x Accor­dance Front — Abdul Raz­zaq Al-Hassan.

Most of the above can­di­dates are 2nd or 3rd rank in their polit­i­cal blocs, but the inter­est­ing is the Sadrists can­di­date Falah Shan­shal; A for­mer Repub­li­can Guard Offi­cer. In 1991 Gulf-war Shanshal’s assign­ment was the pro­tec­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial palace, its sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hoods and the TV sta­tion, well known with his aggres­sive­ness. I don’t know if this is the rea­son behind his nom­i­na­tion to the “J and A” or maybe his rela­tions with for­mer army officers.

Muq­tada Al-Sadr in his “best” per­for­mance, attacked Al-Maliki and his Gov.

It is not impor­tant for the Prime Min­is­ter or any other to achieve more seats in the next Government,neither to obtain the votes of the peo­ple, the most impor­tant is to sat­isfy God and the peo­ple.…. Shame, all the shame on a gov­ern­ment watches the blood­shed of its peo­ple, and to be sac­ri­ficed so the gov­ern­ment can form a mis­er­able sec­ond term gov­ern­ment, with­out sov­er­eignty, or inde­pen­dence .… A gov­ern­ment throw the accu­sa­tions on its neigh­bors [coun­tries] to deny self-responsibility

There are few the­o­ries about the tim­ing of this blunt attack on Maliki:

- Part of the pres­sure on Maliki to uncon­di­tion­ally join the INA. There are reports about the new Iran­ian ambas­sador in Iraq Has­san Dnaii says that his assign­ment is to pre­pare the common-ground (Anti-Baath Party) for medi­a­tion between INA and Dawa Party.

- Muq­tada Al-Sadr saw the “Maliki-Biden” plan for the return of the Ba’athists.

- Muq­tada Al-Sadr wants to block any “Shiite-Shiite” rec­on­cil­i­a­tion attempt.

It seems that Al-Sadr made many Shi­ites ene­mies (Al-Hakim, Maliki, if we don’t count the Sun­nis), but the inter­est­ing thing right now is to wait and see if Maliki will dare to answer Muq­tada or not.