Let's See What You've Bought

So a deal has been reached on no-strings-attached war funding well into the next President's first year, and all the Democrats get out of it is a GI Bill that isn't paid for (they had to drop the tax on millionaires), some appropriations for flooding in the Midwest and Gulf Coast and modified unemployment insurance for an additional 13 weeks. That's not nothing, but given that it's a signing of a death warrant for tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, it's perverse to even talk in terms of what you "get" out of the deal.

But it's worth looking at the country we've bought for another year or so, just to kick the tires and see where it's going. Turns out that the "political progress" that is continually touted by war defenders is more like a press release than actual progress that gets implemented:

When the Iraqi parliament passed a law in January aimed at rehiring former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, U.S. President George W. Bush praised it as a step towards national reconciliation [...]

But five months later, implementation of the law is bogged down by infighting between politicians, and the committee once tasked with hunting out Baathists in government has found itself in the odd position of overseeing the process of rehiring them or offering them state pensions.

The government has still not appointed a seven-member panel to replace the deBaathification Committee, whose enthusiastic purge of Baathists from government posts prompted minority Sunni Arabs to accuse them of conducting a witch-hunt [...]

The committee has received 14,000 applications from former Baathists asking for either reinstatement or for pensions, he said.

But Iraq's presidency council -- which comprises Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and his two deputies -- and a separate Accountability and Justice Committee in parliament have ordered [the committee's head] and his colleagues to freeze their work.

This is merely an example of a persistent pattern where the ruling government makes a show at reconciliation and then uses their power as a tool of repression. The root causes that presage all the sectarian violence we have seen remain and will certainly be acted upon at some juncture.

In other news, we are reminded that this was not a war for oil but a war for oil services contracts.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

Gee, I wonder how the US oil companies got the upper hand and those no-bid contracts? It couldn't be the consequence of a decision made at the initial moments of the invasion that the "victor" in Iraq would get the spoils, could it?

As Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional panel on Wednesday, "We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant, dominating control over how it unfolds."

And there are similar quotes from that time, freezing out Germany and France from the plunder. Not that any country should profit from the natural resources of Iraq except for Iraq.

So, for the low low price of $162 billion dollars, we have secured a ready-to-explode colony in the Middle East, full of black gold that we will pump out of their sand and mainline directly into the bank accounts of Big Oil.

Awesome.

Rob Andrews Ate His Wheaties

I'm following the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, and some of the liveblogging at Democracy Arsenal and The Washington Independent. So far, it's basically a rerun of yesterday. But Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) took a very strong line of questioning on the issue of political reconciliation that I thought was noteworthy. He was the first member of Congress that I've seen specifically state that the de-Baathification law as implemented bars top Baath Party members from key posts like the Defense and Interior Ministries, and doesn't do much de-Baathifying at all. Ryan Crocker tried to wiggle out of it by saying these were only top-level members being barred, but Andrews countered that those are precisely the kind of people, with actual expertise and knowledge, that you need back in the government. Crocker meekly said that the law "was done in the spirit of reconciliation," but the implementation shows that to be completely false. Andrews added that there had been no movement on an oil law, and that provincial elections haven't actually been fully passed as well. In fact the political progress is meager, and some of the laws which are being pointed to as "progress" actually harm reconciliation. In a particularly strong moment, Andrews said "The world didn't begin in September... as far as the American people are concerned this has been going on since April 2003," and it's not acceptable to have such little progress over those five years.

It should be noted that Andrews, who hasn't been entirely progressive on the war, is challenging Frank Lautenberg for the US Senate in New Jersey, and surely is trying to present his progressive bona fides by giving these tough questions on the war. But the points need to be made, that the "political reconciliation" being floated by the Administration and their spinners is the result of a bait-and-switch, where the initial progress on lawmaking is foregrounded and the eventual breakdown or negative consequences is backgrounded.

UPDATE: I should also mention Ellen Tauscher's question to Gen. Petraeus, asking him what he would do if his new commander-in-chief advocated for withdrawal, and he couldn't bring himself to say he would comply with those orders! He does "believe in civilian control of the military," in teh abstract however, so at least that's SOMETHING.

Shut Up We're Winning

As it turns out, the myth of progress in Iraq is starting to wither, even on the terms of those who celebrate the surge. I'm talking about security gains, which up to this point had been dramatic in the last few months, but are starting to backslide.

Iraq security statistics over the past 13 weeks, obtained exclusively by The Washington Independent, tell the tale. In Baghdad, improvised-explosive device (IED) detonations explosions in Baghdad have ticked up slightly to 131 in January from 129 in December—and the last week of January is not included in these latest figures. Countrywide, there was an increase in IED explosions to 2,291 in December from 1,394 in November, followed by a dip to 1,270 in the first three weeks of January. But the week ending on January 25 saw seven suicide explosions Iraq-wide, the most since the week ending Dec. 21, 2007.

It is too early to conclude that the security gains of the surge are unwinding. But they’re being put under stress in a manner not seen since the so-called "Surge of Operations" began in mid-June. Some speculate that the insurgency, knocked on its heels by the changing tactics of U.S. forces in mid-2007, is beginning to adjust, a few months before the surge draws to a close. "I think there’s some credibility to that argument," said Brian Katulis, a national-security expert at the liberal Center for American Progress. "It all begs the question of what’s the grand endgame."

Today's double-bombing in Baghdad won't help those numbers, either.

Of course, this is all besides the point in one respect. The goal of the surge, as has been said over and over again, was to provide breathing space for a political solution. In the meantime it's very positive that less people are dying, but without a reconciliation those positive steps will be illusory, and absolutely everyone looking at this thing agrees with this. And after a few weeks of touting this obviously flawed de-Baathification law, one of the only ostensibly tangible points of political progress, war defenders are going to have to come to terms with the fact that it won't even become law.

Iraq's Presidency Council is unlikely to ratify a new law that would give thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party their old jobs back, Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said on Thursday [...]

Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, said the bill passed by parliament was flawed because it meant many people given jobs after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam in 2003 would be forced out so ex-Baathists could return.

"We cannot regard this law as a step in the national reconciliation process. The spirit of revenge is so clear in many articles of the law," Hashemi said in an interview.

"It is not only me who objects to signing it, but the whole Presidency Council."

The surge is about to come to an end, and so too will much of that breathing space for political progress. And there hasn't been any. It's absurd to expect a continued involvement in the same way given this scenario. The relative success or failure of the surge has to hinge on the success or failure of the country as a whole. The data is very clear on this point. And it's also clear that this war, which has cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, is hurting our national security.

The U.S. military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job, according to a report.

Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday.

The independent commission is charged by Congress to recommend changes in law and policy concerning the Guard and Reserves.

It can't be denied that Iraq is the reason for this. It was an unnecessary war of choice that has resulted in decreased security, lost global authority, a more volatile Middle East, and too many dead.

SOTU Preview

So here's Bush's last State Of The Union if you want it smirk-free. It's pretty much the same garbage, but a couple thoughts:

1) "Tax relief" is a pernicious term and the Democrats haven't found anything acceptable to counter it. I prefer "tax fairness," but that has yet to catch on (except with the FairTax people). It's something to think about.

2) The President actually admits that the Anbar Awakening had nothing to do with the surge:

The Iraqis launched a surge of their own. In the fall of 2006, Sunni tribal leaders grew tired of al Qaida’s brutality and started a popular uprising called “The Anbar Awakening.” Over the past year, similar movements have spread across the country. And today, this grassroots surge includes more than 80,000 Iraqi citizens who are fighting the terrorists. The government in Baghdad has stepped forward as well — adding more than 100,000 new Iraqi soldiers and police during the past year.

The surge didn't begin until 2007. Points for honesty. Of course, what's dishonest is what's omitted - that we're paying these Sunnis not to kill us, and that the Iraqi government doesn't want any part of them in the security forces. Wonder if anyone will pick up on that.

3) Of course, he touted the de-Baathification law that was pushed by Sadrists and boyocotted by the Sunni parties. Points for honesty taken away!

4) Here's the part where he yells at Congress for not allowing him to destroy the Fourth Amendment. It's actually quite modest:

One of the most important tools we can give them is the ability to monitor terrorist communications. To protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning. Last year, the Congress passed legislation to help us do that. Unfortunately, the Congress set the legislation to expire on February 1. This means that if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger. The Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. The Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We have had ample time for debate. The time to act is now.

That whole "believed to have assisted" formulation is so Orwellian. But this is actually less threatening than I expected. Bush knows that Congress is actually pretty emboldened. Whether they'll follow through is anyone's guess.

Reading Progressive Blogs Is Like Going In A Time Machine

The "news" doesn't catch up until a week or so later.

More than a dozen Iraqi lawmakers, U.S. officials and former Baathists here and in exile expressed concern in interviews that the law could set off a new purge of ex-Baathists, the opposite of U.S. hopes for the legislation.

Approved by parliament this month under pressure from U.S. officials, the law was heralded by President Bush and Iraqi leaders as a way to soothe the deep anger of many ex-Baathists -- primarily Sunnis but also many Shiites such as Awadi -- toward the Shiite-led government.

Yet U.S. officials and even legislators who voted for the measure, which still requires approval by Iraq's presidency council, acknowledge that its impact is hard to assess from its text and will depend on how it is implemented. Some say the law's primary aim is not to return ex-Baathists to work, but to recognize and compensate those harmed by the party. Of the law's eight stated justifications, none mentions reinstating ex-Baathists to their jobs.

"The law is about as clear as mud," said one U.S. senior diplomat.

Of course, this tracks with what I wrote 10 days ago about the Iraqi de-Baathification law, which was obviously bogus from the moment it was announced.

Obviously this was something spearheaded by the Shiite majority in the Parliament, otherwise it could not get done this quickly. What I did not know until reading deeper into the reports is that the law was actively opposed by the Sunni minority who you would think would be precisely those to benefit from its implementation. And the prime movers were the Sadrists, not likely to be those interested in unity and reconciliation [...]

The Sadrists had demanded that the De-Baathification Commission not be dissolved, but would accept a change in name for it. They had demanded that the Baath Party remain dissolved, and that the high-ranking members of the party be forbidden to enter the new political life or serve as bureaucrats. The Sadrists had also insisted that any high-ranking Baathists presently employed by the new Iraqi government must be fired!

The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries.

You didn't have to do a lot of digging to understand the truth here. But our media decided to swallow Administration bullshit (as they have been wont to do since before the war began, on 935 separate occasions) for a week and a half and give the mindless defenders another propaganda victory. And with an opposition party standing mute, there was nobody disputing the incorrect myth of progress.

The delay from the traditional media makes it nearly impossible to convince the public that this law was useless and indeed counter-productive. The impact is that the Administration narrative becomes the first to market, and impossible to dislodge.

Bush's Final Year Off To A Hell Of A Start

The Bush Administration kicked off their final year by acknowledging that there wouldn't be any progress on the international front.

Only a few months ago, senior officials predicted that before their exit, they could deliver the Middle East peace deal that had eluded so many predecessors. But this month, as President Bush toured Israel and the West Bank, officials made it clear that the deal he's now talking about is not a long-awaited final agreement, but a preliminary pact to set the terms for talks.

In addition, the administration's efforts to get North Korea and Iran to end their nuclear programs have suffered deflating setbacks in recent weeks. And although the administration's greatest foreign policy undertaking, Iraq, has seen encouraging security improvements, the goal of Iraqi political reconciliation remains distant.

The upshot is that the Bush administration is going to be spending the next year managing crises and tidying up messes until the next president takes over, rather than reaching legacy milestones, as officials recently had hoped.

Amazing, so you apparently can't spend seven years neglecting global problems and then expect to solve them all in the way that a college student crams for a test.

The foreign policy landscape, from the perspective of the Bushies, isn't actually so bad. No, they're not likely to get their glorious war in Iran, no matter how much the President disavows the assessments of the intelligence community. This clumsy Gulf of Tonkin facsimile, forever to be known as the Filipino Monkey incident, will make any other effort to propagandize for war fall on deaf ears.

So no, they didn't get their war. But they're hoping to escape Iraq by the skin of their teeth, creating a situation that is untenable but that they won't be blamed for. And that was the entire point.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstanding, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction [...]

In short, the surge has done nothing to overturn former secretary of state Colin Powell's now-famous "Pottery Barn" rule: Iraq is irretrievably broken, and we own it. To say that any amount of "kicking ass" will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of failure.

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.

There's enough going on for the fabulists to continue the lie about success, and the military can bomb the place into submission so that they can create a narrative that things are stable. But really, the Bushies are invested in forcing the successor to keep the war going, mainly by ensuring that the Iraqis are so dependent on us that leaving would unleash short-term chaos.

We're now seeing a lame duck just trying to get out of Washington before everything caves in.

McCain Might Want To Reconsider Running For The Republican Nomination

I knew that the establishment right was going apeshit over Mike Huckabee, but I didn't realize that extended to John McCain as well:

Meanwhile, the Republican prospects in the fall just got even dimmer. I say this not only because a weak general election candidate won a primary, but because Mitt Romney’s win pretty much guarantees a bitter fight for the nomination. If you doubt that, here is what Rush Limbaugh said about McCain and Huckabee on his program today: “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.” This week, Rush and his radio mimics have been on the rampage on the party’s modernizers, from Newt Gingrich on over.

This thing will only get uglier.

McCain hasn't won a race this year among Republicans, and in 2000 he never won a closed primary. Most of the races from here on out are closed, so he's going to have some trouble. And we know that McCain has a lot of enemies in DC, though probably not as much as you would expect (he's not all that maverick). Furthermore, McCain's problem with Republicans has just as much to do with wildly changing stances on the issues as Mitt Romney's (though Romney is clearly seen as a more RELIABLE conservative, no matter what the media thinks).

Compare this to, say, John McCain. He's flighty as hell. For years, he's an orthodox conservative. Then he's an orthodox conservative who also supports this one ill-conceived campaign finance restriction. Then he's running for president. Now suddenly Pat Roberston and Jerry Falwell are forces of evil. Then Bush beats him with some sleazy campaign stunts. Now he wants to regulate carbon emissions! And import drugs from Canada! Bush sucks, he's evil and corrupt and incompetent and wrecking the country and oh he's up for re-election well of course I'll strongly support him etc., etc,. etc. Then the establishment warms up to him so he warms up to the establishment. So now he supports the Bush tax cuts and the Bush plan for Iraq and the Bush immigration plan. Oh wait voters don't like the Bush immigration plan? Well then I've learned my lesson and I was never for amnesty and by the way I'm now against carbon curbs. But you know what's great? The surge. And Joe Lieberman in his crazy uncle phase. And David Petraeus. Petraeus is so great that I think civilian control of the military is obsolete and I won't say whether or not I think tax cuts increase revenue but let's cut spending a lot, eh?

In other words, on eighty percent of issues McCain seems to me to be making it up as he goes along. At his best, he's cravenly flip-flopping according to the political headwinds. But other times, he just seems to be acting on whim or out of pique. Or he's coming to middle-ground positions that don't make sense, like "global warming is real and we should stop it, but only through measures that wouldn't actually stop it!" The rest of the time, he's just really, really, really committed to the military and to militarism. Worst of all, like all the other candidates for president, his personal level of experience with foreign policy issues is minimal, but unlike the other candidates he doesn't seem to realize this believing instead that his enthusiasm about the military and for soldiers and soldiering constitutes a close substitute for having real ideas about international relations.

Strangely, McCain has not made the electability argument, which is easily his strongest, and really his only path to victory. Instead, he's trying to out-bamboozle his rivals on Iraq, claiming that the bogus de-Baathification law is somehow an example of "progress." Considering that all of the Republicans have drunk the Kool-Aid on Iraq, I don't see how that sets him apart.

UPDATE: TPM EC has more on those ominous exit polls.

UPDATE II: In addition, Romney is clearly in the lead, with two firsts and two seconds, as well as a convincing win in the largest state. That's all subject to change, of course, and I suspect he'll ignore South Carolina to an extent to focus on the bigger delegate prize in Nevada (because of RNC delegate-stripping; SC is a bigger state) so he can notch another victory.

Non-Reconciliation Update

Spackerman has more on the new de-Baathification law, which one Sunni called "a sword on the neck of the people." When something considered a major benchmark to Iraqi reconciliation passes, and the US Embassy has no comment, you pretty much know what's going on. Meanwhile 70,000 Sunnis with guns are going to watch their compatriots either lose their jobs or be murdered for the crime of being part of the Baath Party, and... what? Turn away?

Meanwhile, nobody owns Iraq policy, with the commanders improvising on the ground and the commander in chief deferring everything over to them. This is wonderful for accountability.

I know that the Democrats think they have 2008 locked up, and they don't have to talk about Iraq anymore. But they just imperil the future President's ability to manage the situation, and eventually this will redound back on them.

The Myth of Progress Gets Even Mythier

So I read the news reports of Iraq passing a change to its de-Baathification law with interest. It appeared to come out of nowhere. The Iraqi Parliament was off for a month in December, was no closer to this law before then, but all of a sudden, just when the President is tooling around the Middle East, this law gets passed. Indeed, he was the first to praise it:

Traveling in Manama, Bahrain, President Bush hailed the law as "an important step toward reconciliation."

"It's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people," he said.

Obviously this was something spearheaded by the Shiite majority in the Parliament, otherwise it could not get done this quickly. What I did not know until reading deeper into the reports is that the law was actively opposed by the Sunni minority who you would think would be precisely those to benefit from its implementation. And the prime movers were the Sadrists, not likely to be those interested in unity and reconciliation.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic that the parliamentarians who criticized the law were drawn from the National Dialogue Council led by ex-Baathist Salih Mutlak, from the Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi (an ex-Baathist), and from two of the three parties that make up the Sunni Arab National Accord Front.

So the parties in parliament that have the strong Baathist legacy did not like the law one little bit. But they are the ones that it was intended to mollify!

Parliament has been unable to get a quorum on several recent occasions, and barely mustered a quorum on Saturday, with 143 members in attendance out of 275. The new law passed with a narrow majority. The vote count was not published anywhere I could find it, but it could have been as low as 72 [...]

The Sadrists had demanded that the De-Baathification Commission not be dissolved, but would accept a change in name for it. They had demanded that the Baath Party remain dissolved, and that the high-ranking members of the party be forbidden to enter the new political life or serve as bureaucrats. The Sadrists had also insisted that any high-ranking Baathists presently employed by the new Iraqi government must be fired!

The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries.

Essentially, this law forces a Baath Party member who wants a job in the government to appear before a judiciary board in public view and announce that they are an ex-Baathist, in a time where Shiite militias and death squads still operate. This is a death sentence that appears to be more about rooting out Baath Party members than anything else.

Critics of the legislation suspect the new body will be manipulated by the same parties that dominated the old committee. They also worry that any Baathists who seek jobs will be targeted by paramilitary groups.

"I wouldn't come back to my job because of this law," Sunni parliament member Saleh Mutlak said. "It's humiliating to the people. You have to condemn yourself, and then be investigated, and then you could be killed [by someone] after going to the committee."

It's very easy for Bush defenders and war supporters to conflate the sectarian elements in Iraq, so let's be clear. This is a law that everyone is saying is designed to help Sunnis that was opposed by most major Sunni groups. This is just the same as the return of the zombie lie that Iranian explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) are being used by insurgents and "Al Qaeda in Iraq," when Iranians are Shiites, Al Qaeda is Sunni and the "bombs" they described are no more than hand hammered ashtrays that could be made anywhere in the world.

While Republicans spin and lie and distort, Democrats appear unwilling to pick apart the arguments even a little bit, and so in the absence of a response, the lies stand.

Welcome to Iraq policy in 2008.

That major reconciliation deal by Iraqi political leaders? Fraud.

At the beginning of this week, Iraqi political leaders announced in a press conference that they had reached a major deal on several of the US-recommended benchmarks for political progress in Iraq. Between the resignation of Fredo and Wide Stance Larry Craig and all the other hoopla that has occurred this week, this event got somewhat ignored. But it would have been a linchpin to the Petraeus-Crocker White House Iraq report scheduled for the middle of next month. Finally, we are starting to see real political progress, a coming together by the Shiite and Sunni and even Kurdish groups to reach solutions on such issues as de-Ba'athification and freeing some Sunni prisoners and more.

Except for one thing... it was a complete shadow play. Total bullshit.

From Baghdad, Charles Crain writes that the first sign that this was not much of a deal was that one of the participants isn't even part of the government, and has no plans to return:

But a day after signing the deal the country's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, announced that the Sunni bloc that walked out of the government August 1 still had no plans to return. "Our previous experience with the government has not been encouraging," he explained, "and we will not go back just because of promises, unless there are real and tangible reforms."

The deal was made between the figureheads at the top of the government and some of the various factions, but not others which are very significant and crucial to any parliamentary success.

And Sunday's deal was more notable for who wasn't involved than who was. The agreement didn't include representatives from the bloc loyal to Shi'ite politician and militia chieftain Moqtada al-Sadr. A senior Western diplomat earlier this month praised Maliki for distancing himself from Sadr, widely viewed as the Shi'ite leader most responsible for sectarian violence, but American officials are well aware that Sadr and his followers cannot simply be marginalized.

The Sadrists are a powerful presence in parliament and in several key government ministries. Their Mahdi Army militia has infiltrated the Iraqi Security Forces. As a practical matter, an agreement to reconcile with former Ba'athists is next to meaningless without Sadr's acquiescence. And the Sadrists weren't absent simply from Sunday's deal. At the moment they are not even part of the government; like their Sunni adversaries they are engaged in a boycott.

So this was a major deal between one piece of the Shiite block, a Sunni politician who isn't even part of the government, and none of the other major factions. As we've seen today, Sadr isn't even totally in control of his own militia, who would certainly be able to veto the move for any Ba'athists trying to reclaim their positions. The Parliament hasn't met in a month, and there's no indication they would actually pass any of these recommendations made by this "panel of leaders" which is emasculated politically. It's a fake document with no staying power.

One of the sharpest commentators on Iraq, Marc Lynch, adds:

Jalal Talabani's emergency summit (last week) produced a political coalition based upon the Maliki 4 - a sectarian four party bloc (the two Kurdish parties, SIIC and Dawa) which prefers to call itself "moderate" (it isn't) or "the majority" (it isn't). A few days ago, the Maliki 4 managed to get Tareq al-Hashimi of the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Tawafuq Bloc to sign on to an agreement which promised movement on some key issues, including Sunni prisoners and an end to deBaathification.

This agreement was likely produced for the sole purpose of giving Ryan Crocker something to bring back to Congress (and is what I expected weeks ago). But it doesn't actually solve anything: Hashemi has made very clear that he has no intention of rejoining Maliki's government, the agreements exist only on paper at this point, and nothing has been done about the deeply sectarian nature of what passes for the Iraqi state.

Hashemi likely agreed to sit up on stage for this kabuki because he's just as constrained by Sunni forces who want something to show for working with Maliki. But when this fails they are just as likely to completely break with the government and no longer even make a show of anything but open warfare.

Ilan Goldenberg has more, and notes that nobody has yet seen this "grand compromise" touted by Maliki and his cadre, probably because it's totally meaningless. Plus:

Back in early July the cabinet (Or should I say half cabinet , since all of the Sunnis as well as the Sadrists were already boycotting) approved an oil law which the Kurds and Sunnis both objected to. You had two to three days of news stories about it, but it became pretty apparent very quickly that there was no chance it would actually pass parliament. Conveniently, this happened one week before the Administration was set to give its midterm July 15 report on Iraq.

Now, we have Maliki taking heat from all sides and interestingly enough we have a "major" breakthrough.

Maliki is both trying to save his own bacon from a lobbyist-administered coup, and trying to help keep the American support that he needs to survive, so he concocted this little deal, which plays right into the hands of the GOP spin machine. The dissembling is not limited to The Green Zone Fog, as described by Rep. Tauscher today. There's going to be happy talk everywhere, a surge of lies which those who want an end to the occupation of Iraq will have to bat down in our own private Whack-A-Mole. We can point to nonpartisan reports, like the GAO's which will be released next week:

Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush's Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline for Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public, also said the administration is preparing a case to play down its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, "all or nothing'' standards when compiling the document.

There's just going to be a mass of bullshit coming in September. This so-called "political deal" is part of it. Be aware, and step lively.