Tilt to the Shiites, advocated by Cheney's office. Who reported that before? Oh yeah, me, back on November 16th, in the LAT:

AS SECTARIAN violence rises in Iraq and the White House comes under increasing pressure to revamp its strategy there, a debate is emerging inside the Bush administration: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and, instead, throw its lot in with the Shiites?

A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost.

This past Veterans Day weekend, according to my sources, almost the entire Bush national security team gathered for an unpublicized two-day meeting. The topic: Iraq. The purpose of the meeting was to come up with a consensus position on a new path forward. Among those attending were President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor Stephen Hadley, outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

Numerous policy options were put forward at the meeting, which revolved around a strategy paper prepared by Hadley and drawn from his recent trip to Baghdad. One was the Shiite option. Participants were asked to consider whether the U.S. could really afford to keep fighting both the Sunni insurgency and Shiite militias — or whether it should instead focus its efforts on combating the Sunni insurgency exclusively, and even help empower the Shiites against the Sunnis.

To do so would be a reversal of Washington's strategy over the last two years of trying to coax the Sunnis into the political process....

So what's the logic behind the idea of "unleashing the Shiites"? ...

Glad the Post is catching up. Their "80% option" piece also came out more than a couple weeks after my own, but their piece missed that the real locus of advocacy for the "unleash the Shiites" option was coming from Cheney's office. Notice how I also revealed for the first time in the piece above the existence of the Hadley strategy paper drawn from his recent trip to Baghdad that the NYT later unearthed. I elaborate on the various nuances of the "tilt" and other options under consideration by the administration in further detail here:

... Among the views advanced ... was one seemingly at odds with the gist of the Hadley memo: This option, described to me as a fallback position supported by Cheney's office and elements of the National Security Council, would have the U.S. abandon the immediate goal of national reconciliation and instead pick a side -- the Shia. The "unleash the Shia" option would have the United States back a Shiite coalition that would include SCIRI leader Hakim and his Badr Brigades as the core of an Iraqi Army under the direct control of Prime Minister Maliki. Even as the United States sided with the Shia, Hadley's memo makes clear that the United States would at the same time press Maliki to distance himself from Sadr and his Mahdi army. Note in particular the Hadley memo's language concerning the importance of rapidly expanding the size of, and Maliki's control over, the Iraqi Army: ..."Ask Casey to develop a plan to empower Maliki, including … more forces under Maliki's command and control." Military sources say the key to this control is the Badr Brigades.

It's important to realize they are not mutually exclusive options, the hunker down and tilt to the Shiites option is something of a fallback position if and sadly likely when the immediate goal of national reconciliation is no longer considered supportable, potentially only after a new surge of several thousand US troops to try to secure Baghdad. When US government officials suggest tilt is just another way of validating the results of democratically held Iraqi elections, reporters should think, we are being spun. Tilt is about the risk of condoning a level of violence thought to be required to get the Sunnis to recognize their reduced status in the new Iraq.

Posted by Laura at December 9, 2006 12:06 AM