Bush meets with King Abdullah in Jordan..but not with Maliki

This gets more and more interesting the longer it goes on.

President Bush is en route back from Amman, Jordan for what was supposed to be a 3 way summit between him, Jordan's King Abdullah and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki..except it didn't go down that way.

Maliki came to Amman,but stayed away from the Bush- Abdullah meeting, which launched a whole bunch of speculations..who snubbed who?

The background of this is a confidential memo and leaked by the New York Times, of course..who cheerfuly admit the thing was marked top secret It's from Stephen Hadley, Bush’s National Security Adviser, and is highly critical of Maliki.

The memo is astounding in it's own right, and warrants separate treatment. I could scarcely come up with a better example of how the Bush Administration has been simply clueless in its pursuit of `Arab Democracy. You can read it here, along with my comments.

Maliki's official reason for not meeting as a trio was that King Abdullah was going to put the hammer down on Dubbya to squeeze those lousy Israelis for all their worth in favor of the Palestinians, and that wasn't part of his agenda just now. These are the same Palestinians Abdullah
doesn't want in his country, even though Jordanian law says they're Jordanian citizens!

The real reason, I think, is that, aside from being in a snit about the memo which characterizes him as ignorant and ineffectual in so many words, Maliki is worried about which way to jump.

The US holds the purse strings, but Maliki, like a lot of other Arabs, has a feeling we won't be around too much longer.

On the other hand, Moqtada al-Sadr and the ministers beholden to al Sadr (and Iran) have said that if Maliki goes through with the summit with Bush, they're boycotting his government. And aside from the parlimentary and electoral problems that would cause, it might just impact severely on Maliki's personal safety, if you know what I mean. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him suddenly resign and bugger off to Europe or the Carribean with his share of the skimmed US aid millions he more than likely has squirreled away somewhere.

The two finally met, and performed the usual antics at a press conference, as pictured above. Bush's material included praising Maliki as `a strong leader' and pledging that there will be `no graceful exit from Iraq' but that we will continue to stay there for the time being, doing exactly whathas worked so well in the past 4 years.

"I was reassured by his commitment to a pluralistic society that is politically united and a society in which people are held to account if they break the law, whether those people be criminals, al-Qaeda, militia, or whoever," Bush said.

Maliki was a bit more non-commital, saying that he and Bush had agreed have agreed to speed the transfer of more responsibility to Iraqi security forces. (read my comments on the memo that was leaked to see exactly how ridiculous that statement was).

They've apparently set a target date for June, 2007 for complete transfer of what passes for security to the Iraqis. Which means either President Bush gave an ultimatum to maliki or Maliki gave one to Bush.

In other news, the US is reportedly considering abandoning Anbar province to the Sunni insurgents, pulling the troops in the mostly Sunni province out and sending them to Baghdad in a last ditch effort to try and control the capitol.

This of course ws immediately denied by General Peter Pace, Chairman of the JCS, but..well what else would he say?