Maliki's unsavoury friends

Andy McCarthy:

Maliki spent his exile-from-Saddam years in Syria as a political officer in the Dawa party which developed close ties with Hezbollah and Iran. In the first elected Iraqi government, he was the number two guy to Dawa's leader, Ibrahim al-Jafaari — Jafaari having gotten the gig by virtue of being hand-picked by Moqtada al-Sadr, who (a) controls a critical bloc in the new democratic legislature, (b) maintains his own terrorist militia, the Mahdi army, (c) continues to wage a low intensity war with U.S. and British forces in southern Iraq, (d) has himself developed ties with Iran and Hezbollah, and (e) is sending some of his forces to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah against Israel.