Obama’s bad bet on Maliki

- Dexter Filkins: “President Obama won the White House in part by promising to end the war in Iraq, and since then he placed his faith in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to help him do so… In early 2009, a group of American diplomats in Iraq warned the White House that it ran the risk of creating a dictator. They were largely ignored, and when Maliki won [re-election] a year later Obama gave him his full support.”