Benchmarks and Carbombs

It has been fairly obvious for the last few years that the Iraq project would result in monumental failure, but now we have a drop dead date (no pun intended) for the end. Iraq's Sunni Arab Vice President has announced that his organization, The Iraqi Accord Front, will pull out of the current Government on May 15th unless certain demands are met. These demands, which include disarming the Shiite militias and re-writing the Constitution, have virtually no chance being met. Therefor, on May 15th the Iraqi Government unofficially implodes.

The Iraqi Accord Front holds 44 Seats in Parliament and the Sunnis as a group hold a total of 58 seats. Moqtada Al Sadre has already pulled his 32 MPs and the Islamic Virtue Party has pulled their 15. Is this picture becoming clearer? The Government is falling apart and if the remaining Sunni MPs pull out it is over. The only way to address that would be a new election, then starting a Government and Constitution from scratch. What are the odds that either the American or Iraqi people will embrace that idea?

Make no mistake about it, the Maliki Governments rule should be measured in days or weeks. All the benchmarks and surges in the world will have little effect on a country in complete anarchy after the Government falls. If the GOP'ers in Congress are smart, they'll jump off this ship before it sinks. The way things are shaping up, when Iraq goes down the Republican party will be in the ballroom playing their instruments and singing praises to Bush all the way to the bottom. The penalty for blind obedience is high, but its fair.