With Democratic leaders insisting on a timeline for withdrawal, the stalled negotiations raise an intriguing political question: What if Democrats privately want this to linger? Senate Majority Leader Harry "Reid's steadfastness prompted questions by many senators as to whether the Senate leadership actually wants legislation that could garner the necessary 60 votes -- or whether Reid would prefer to keep Republicans on the defensive, for political reasons," write Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman of The Washington Post.
Add to this mix Bob Woodward's piece in the Post today, which has CIA Director Michael Hayden offering a bleak, nearly hopeless assessment of the Maliki government in his private meeting with the Iraq Study Group eight months ago. While the president told the Iraq Study Group privately that "constitutional order" was emerging in Iraq, Hayden "painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group" when he met with them shortly after the mid-term congressional elections in November, Woodward reports. "The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded, per Woodward's story. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."