The last time Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited the White House - in late 2011 - he and President Obama touted Iraq's political and security progress. On Friday, Maliki arrived again, this time in search of help to fight a stunning resurgence of al-Qaeda violence that has claimed 7,000 Iraqi deaths in 2013 - nearly 1,000 in October. It will be a hard sell. Most Americans, including Obama, are eager to put the Iraq war out of mind. And as a bipartisan group of senators noted in a letter to Obama last week, Maliki's "mismanagement" of Iraq's sectarian politics has helped create the climate that permitted al-Qaeda to reemerge.
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