This should come as a surprise to no one who's been paying attention. Al-Maliki's in hock to the militias and al-Sadr (since al-Sadr is a key to al-Maliki's bloc), al-Maliki's been warning our troops off of the Mahdi Army since he took power, there have been reports for the last two years that the Shi'a politicians were running death squads, and the only reason al-Maliki got his job in the first place was because a) we didn't know anything (negative or positive) about him from his time in the Da'wa Party, b) he was openly complimentary about the coalition presences, and c) Bush will back any Iraqi politician who will openly kiss his ass ( http://www.slate.com/id/2161644/ ).

I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for the mainstream press to put this together.