Iraquagmire: Lucy Pulls The Football From Charlie Brown Again

For the second time in a month, the Iraqi presidency council has vetoed a law that was hailed as a great breakthrough by the Bush Administration, John McCain and the slew of neocon handlers. This familiar pattern plays on the failures of most of the traditional media to follow up on anything. There's a big news hit when the Iraqis pass a bill, like the de-Baathification law, or this recent one setting up provincial elections. Then the law is quietly submarined, but that story ends up on A-27, weeks after the initial story on A-1. The effect is to give people the false sense that there's any political movement whatsoever, pushing the "shut up we're winning" story right along to a public that can't be expected to do the legwork and know the difference. And here we go again.

The rejected bill, which sets out the political structure for Iraq's provincial governments and establishes a basis for elections in October, was only the second of 18 U.S.-set political benchmarks that the war-tore nation needs to reach.

Parliament considered it in a bundle with two other bills, a general amnesty and a budget, and approved it on Feb. 12 in what was welcomed in Washington as an example of good government, compromise and progress toward national unity.

Now the question is whether parliament is willing to revise the measure.

"It was a package deal. Now that package is broken," said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan.

This was the set of bills that led Huckleberry Graham to say that politics moves faster in Baghdad than in Washington. But now there's chaos. The complex way in which this compromise was brokered was the result of deals made by all the major stakeholders. If points in the October elections now have to change, that'll need to be balanced with changes in the other two laws, and the whole game of Jenga can come crashing down in a hurry.

And those elections really need to happen. In parts of the country where the Sunnis boycotted the initial elections, the representative is completely out of whack. The sticking point is whether the elections will produce strong provincial governors who cannot be removed by the Prime Minister at will. This is more than a technical difference. It's basically the difference between a weak federalist state and a strong central government. While the Presidency council claims the October 1 elections will go on as scheduled, that really is not a guarantee.

Meanwhile, in the other nightmare on the horizon, the Turkish incursion into Kurdistan, the Secretary of Defense has called for a rapid conclusion to the fighting (why is he giving the Turks timetables? The PKK will wait 'em out!), for fear of it destabilizing the region and provoking a peshmerga counterattack, which has already been authorized by Kurdish lawmakers. Turkey is currently vowing to pull out in a matter of days but again, there's no guarantee, especially considering that yesterday produced the strongest fighting yet, with 77 PKK members dead. Many experts are worried.

The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud [Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight.

I'm beyond believing what gets printed on page A-1 at the early stages of anything that happens in Iraq, and so should so. The media is carefully stage-managing a situation that is far more dire than they let on.

UPDATE: Here's why the provincial elections are so important: the current Shi'a provincial leaders in Anbar are thinning the patience of the Awakening groups. It's a matter of time before they do more than walk off the job, but retaliate:

U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support.

Since Feb. 8, thousands of fighters in restive Diyala province have left their posts in order to pressure the government and its American backers to replace the province's Shiite police chief. On Wednesday, their leaders warned that they would disband completely if their demands were not met. In Babil province, south of Baghdad, fighters have refused to man their checkpoints after U.S. soldiers killed several comrades in mid-February in circumstances that remain in dispute.

Some force leaders and ground commanders also reject a U.S.-initiated plan that they say offers too few Sunni fighters the opportunity to join Iraq's army and police, and warn that low salaries and late payments are pushing experienced members to quit.

First off, we're trying to pull off a balancing act that is nearly impossible, pleasing former insurgent and militia groups and the central government that wants no part of them at the same time. Second, insurgent groups are starting to infiltrate the Awakening groups as they grow more and more frustrated. Third, attacks on Concerned Local Citizens members are rising. Fourth, since the provincial leaders in places like Diyala are Shi'a, owing at least in part to the Sunni boycott of the previous elections, the Sunnis are being marginalized in their own home regions.

A restive mix, to be sure.

UPDATE II: Turkey is more committed to resisting troop timetables than the US.

Turkey has given no clear timeframe for ending its military operations against Kurdish PKK rebels in northern Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters on Thursday after talks with Turkish officials.