One Utah

While John McCain travels the campaign trail talking happily about how “al Qaeda is on the run,” Iraq is on the verge of a total breakdown. Americans are not even fighting al Qaeda in Iraq or anywhere else thanks to the incompetence of the Bush administration.
Anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gave a final warning [...]

Juan Cole, almost alone among Iraq commentators, explains: Why al-Maliki attacked Basra. The entire article is a must-read, however here’s the bottom line:
If the Sadr Movement rules most Shiite-majority provinces, including Baghdad, that will make it difficult for the U.S. military to remain in the country.
Here are the facts:

Provincial elections, now scheduled for [...]

For the third straight day, the American and British war planes conducted air strikes in support of Iraqi security forces in Basra. About 30,000 Iraqi troops are fending off raids by Mahdi Army fighters, who control 70 percent of the city. British artillery batteries fired on Basra Saturday. The 1st Battalion Scots [...]

From the Washington Post:
U.S. Has Little Influence, Few Options in Iraq’s Volatile South
As U.S. warplanes attacked targets in Basra yesterday, Bush administration officials acknowledged that their hands-off strategy toward southern Iraq in recent years has left them with little knowledge of the conflicts among competing Shiite groups there and few ways of influencing them.
 …Competition for [...]

From the London Times: Iraqi police in Basra shed their uniforms, kept their rifles and switched sides
“The Iraqi Army is already defeated from within. They come to Basra with fear in their hearts, knowing they have to fight their brothers, the sons of Iraq, because of an order from Bush and his friends in the [...]