Right Wing Nut House

More evidence that Maliki has decided to bite the bullet and start doing the things necessary to quell the violence:

Iraq’s Interior Ministry has fired or reassigned more than 10,000 employees, including high-ranking police, who were found to have tortured prisoners, accepted bribes or had ties to militias, a ministry spokesman has disclosed.
A soon-to-be-released internal inquiry also details 41 incidents of human rights abuse at the ministry. In one case, four members of the national police hanged prisoners from a ceiling and beat them with sticks in a ministry-run prison known as Site 4, according to the report by the ministry’s inspector general.

The United States has pressured Iraq’s Shiite-led government to clean up its security forces as they undertake a broad plan to reduce sectarian violence. Sunni politicians have accused Iraq’s police of collaborating with Shiite death squads.

More than half of those fired or reassigned since June were found to have militia ties, Jassim Hanoon, the Interior Ministry’s deputy spokesman, said in a weekend interview. The investigation is ongoing.

“We are struggling against this disease,” Hanoon said of militia infiltration at the ministry.

It’s a start.

Interior is lousy with Sadrists and featured the worst of the corrupt bureaucrats. There were also several top officials with direct ties to Tehran. I doubt whether even purging or reassigning 10,000 employees is going to solve the problem. But by any measure, it is a positive sign.

But Maliki is not stopping at Interior. It looks like he’s going whole hog and is going to take on members of his own coalition as well:

The Interior Ministry employs about 270,000 people, including police, emergency response units and administrative staff.

“Maybe we aren’t 100% cured,” Hanoon said. “But we’re getting better day by day.” Some ministry employees were fired for arresting innocent people, while others had past criminal records, he said.

Investigators are using information gathered within the ministry to probe political leaders and members of parliament, something not previously done, Hanoon said. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vowed to pursue criminal charges against political figures — including members of parliament — linked to extremist groups.

The cases of human rights abuse were detailed in a 250-page annual report that will be released this week, Akeel Saeed, the Interior Ministry’s inspector general, said in an interview.

It appears that Maliki realizes that the end of massive American involvement in Iraq is on the horizon and is afraid that unless concrete steps are taken to get his own house in order before the bulk of US combat troops leave, being Prime Minister of Iraq won’t mean very much in the larger scheme of things.

My guess would be that the next ministry in the cross hairs is Sadr’s power base, the Ministry of Health. The anti-American cleric has used that ministry the way Dick Daley uses City Hall in Chicago - as patronage center for his followers that cements their loyalty to him after he gives them a job. Iraq’s economy is still tight with unemployment hovering around 25% (down from 40% before the invasion) so a plumb ministry job goes a long way in increasing Sadr’s popularity.

But Sadr apparently is not going to sit still during this effort to kick he and his followers out of power:

The Shiite Mahdi Army militia has so far resisted full-scale retaliation through a combination of self-interest and intense government pressure. But the militia’s leader, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is now being cornered in new ways that have put him on the defensive.

An expected Cabinet reshuffle could take a serious bite out of al-Sadr’s voice in government — a move strongly encouraged by Washington.

Al-Sadr also opened the door for U.S. and Iraqi troops to enter the Mahdi stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad — under a painstaking deal with authorities — but his loyalists are still being hunted outside the capital.

“Al-Sadr and his forces could be feeling under siege,” said Alireza Nourizadeh, chief researcher at the London-based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies. “That makes them less predictable. That means they are more dangerous.”

Slowly, Sadr is being marginalized. First by causing his militia to hunker down during the surge. Second, by kicking his ministers out of the government thus neutering his influence in the cabinet. And the last step logically would be to go after his power base in the ministry of health.

If Maliki can take on the powerful forces in the Interior Ministry, when will the other shoe drop and a purge take place that would oust the Sadrists from the Ministry of Health?

Faster please…