190,000 Guns Go Missing in Iraq

This post, written by Juan Cole, originally appeared on Informed Comment

Republican candidates on Iraq Sunday:

"They are making progress, and we are winning on the ground," said Senator John McCain of Arizona. "We must win. And we will not set a date for surrender, as the Democrats want us to do." . .

"The reality is that you do not achieve peace through weakness and appeasement," said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. . .

Mr. Romney said: "I think we're pretty much in the same place. It is critical for us to win this conflict. It is essential, and that's why we're going to continue to pursue this effort."

A suicide bomber hit a Shiite neighborhood in the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar Monday morning. Initial reports gave the death toll as 25 and the wounded as 22, but the tolls are expected to rise.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani denied that Iran is supporting Shiite militias in Iraq, saying that the idea was probably based on old intelligence.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Talabani met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, along with Shiite vice president Adil Abdul Mahdi. Talabani says he had had a conversation with George W. Bush and was instructed to impress on al-Maliki that Bush's support is for the general political process in Iraq, not for any one individual. Talabani said that the implication is that al-Maliki is to blame for the current political crisis in which over a dozen ministers and the parties they represent have withdrawn from his government. Sunni VP Tariq al-Hashimi did not attend the meeting, since his party is among those who withdrew from the government. Al-Maliki declined to accept the Sunnis' resignations, leaving the door open to reconciliation. Talabani is pursuing talks with the Sunni Arabs.

Al-Maliki's government is clearly teetering and may fall.

[At the group blog, A. Richard Norton comments on Sunday's outcome in the Lebanese by-election. Also some info on the situation in Afghanistan.]

The Bush administration cannot account for 190,000 AK 47 machine guns and pistols it gave Iraqi security forces in 04 and 05. Actually, I think it is pretty obvious where some of them went.