Here's Jalal Talabani, quoted in the Post from his Sunday talk show appearance:

"Many people in Iraq prefer not to have permanent [bases], but they want to see . . . American military bases . . . to protect the sovereignty and independence of Iraq," Talabani said on ABC's "This Week."

So, Jalal: bases or no bases?

Talk about burying the lede! The Times today doesn't get to the real news from Iraq until way down in its roundup of violence, bombings, etc., when it reports this:

Also in Baghdad, the Iraqi Parliament voted to require the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to bring the matter of how long American troops can stay in Iraq before lawmakers in order for any additional extensions to occur.

Juan Cole, in his blog Informed Comment, says that the vote was 85 to 59 (most members of the 275-member parliament don't bother showing up, mostly out of fear or inability to travel). Adds Cole:

Since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's allies voted against it, this resolution could actually be seen as a vote of no confidence for al-Maliki (see below), though it won't cause his government to fall unless the three blocs decide to attempt to bring him down. I have been saying for the past several months that I wonder if al-Maliki could survive a vote of no confidence, and this resolution helps answer the question. (The answer is, "no.")

Leave it Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland, writing for Alternet, to underscore the importance of this:

The parliament today passed a binding resolution that will guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the U.N. mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq when it comes up for renewal in December. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose cabinet is dominated by Iraqi separatists, may veto the measure.

Reached today by phone in Baghdad, Nassar al Rubaie, the head of Al-Sadr bloc in Iraq's Council of Representatives, said, "This new binding resolution will prevent the government from renewing the U.N. mandate without the parliament's permission. They'll need to come back to us by the end of the year, and we will definitely refuse to extend the U.N. mandate without conditions." Rubaie added: "There will be no such a thing as a blank check for renewing the U.N. mandate anymore, any renewal will be attached to a timetable for a complete withdrawal."

Reached by phone today in Amman, Jordan, following the vote, [Salah] al-Mutlaq [of the National Diaologue Front, a Sunni party in parliament] said: "The parliament is more powerful now -- we can block the renewal of the U.N. mandate and demand to attach a timetable to it."

The resolution passed today is only one part of the nationalists' effort to bring about a U.S. withdrawal. Nassar al Rubaie said of the measure's passage: "All of this is just our backup plan, but our other and more specific resolution setting a timetable will come soon." He promised that nationalists in parliament would force debate on a "clean" and binding resolution requiring occupation forces to withdrawal from the country in the immediate future. "We'll start the deliberations next week," he said. "We have enough signatures for that one already."

According to Juan Cole's blog, Al Zaman newspaper is reporting that Prime MInister Maliki of Iraq ha accused Arab governments of "supporting a revolution" against him.

Interesting, because last week Maliki told CBS that he was worried about the Iraqi army staging a coup d'etat to overthrow his government.

Writing in the WSJ, Fouad Ajami has this to say about I. Lewis Libby:

"He believed in the nobility of this war, he did not trim his sails, and he didn't duck when the war lost its luster."

From IraqSlogger and Az-Zaman [plus my comments]:

Az-Zaman devoted its front page to the news regarding the formation of a new political front, led by Iyad 'Allawi, aiming to challenge, and possibly replace, the current Maliki government.

Az-Zaman (international edition) said that al-Maliki complained that the new front represents a “conspiracy,” woven in “a foreign capital” and intent on executing a “coup” against the current government and the “political process” in Iraq.

By "foreign capital," I assume he means Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, the newspaper quoted Sami al-'Askari, a Maliki advisor, as saying that the Prime Minister discussed the matter of the 'Allawi front with Talabani and Barazani during a recent visit to Kurdistan.

Allawi went to see Barzani, too. Though at the time Ambassador Khalilzad came along, apparently to blunt Allawi's efforts.

Pro-government al-Mada also discussed the prime minister’s statements. The paper quoted Maliki as warning the “conspirators” that “the era of coups d’état has passed with the (departure of) the previous regime” and that “there is no place for conspiracies.”

In parallel to these fiery political statements, Maliki and other high-level members of the ruling establishment have been insinuating that their political opponents are involved in illicit activities, and are threatening to “reveal” incriminating information about them.

Pan-Arab al-Sharq al-Awsat reported today on al-Maliki announcing that “domestic and regional parties” are involved in the sabotage of the Iraqi oil infrastructure. Al-Maliki also warned that the government “may find itself compelled” to name the parties in such activities.

Name the parties? What nonsense. More likely, Maliki will ask his favorite death squad to eliminate them.

Also, in a speech given to Iraqi generals and reported by al-Mada and Az-Zaman, Maliki made links between the plots that are allegedly woven against him and “terrorism” in Iraq, and called on the army to prevent the conspirators from undermining the political process. “These people (the ‘accused’ in Maliki’s statements remain unidentified, but easily identifiable) have crossed the stage of conspiracies to the stage of disrupting security and supporting terrorism,” the Prime Minister said, according to al-Mada.

Back to the 'Allawi front, contrary to al-Mada's report yesterday predicting the downfall of the nascent alliance, Az-Zaman published a story today indicating that 'Allawi’s “front” is alive and well, and expanding.

The newspaper said that it was informed by sources in Cairo that Tariq al-Hashimi (the Iraqi vice-President and leader of the Islamic Party, one of the main constituents of 'Allawi’s coalition) informed the Egyptian president that “numerous political parties in Iraq are ready to announce a broad, moderate front aiming to salvage the situation in Iraq.”

Another spokesman of the Islamic Party told Az-Zaman that the new coalition is intended to “oppose sectarianism.” Futhermore, the paper added that talks are being held with the Shi'a Fadhila party and the Sadrist Current to join the anti-Maliki front. A leader in the Islamic Party told the newspaper that “the Sadrist Current is the closest movement to the ideas we adopt.”

In addition to 'Allawi’s parliamentary list, and several Sunni parties, the new anti-Maliki coalition is rumored to include Kurdish parties that are opposed federalism and to the mainstream Kurdish leadership, as well as several smaller parties and independent deputies. The “front” may also include a Kurdish politician -– Arshad Zibari -– who was a minister in Saddam’s administration. Az-Zaman added that Zibari, who enjoys a measure of popular support in Nineveh, had organized pro-Saddam Kurdish militias and fought many battles against the forces of Barazani and Talabani during Saddam’s rule.

It is also worthy to mention that Az-Zaman’s coverage of the anti-Maliki coalition was restricted to the London-based international edition of the publication and did not figure in the Iraq edition. As a general rule, news items that are deemed “polemical” or critical of powerful parties and politicians often get left out from the Baghdad print

We can only hope that a true nationalist coalition emerges out of all this discussion. It's interesting that a Kurdish leader is involved.

The most interesting reaction so far to the destruction of the minarets at the Samarra mosque -- the same one that sparked intense Sunni-Shia killings in 2006 -- is Muqtada Sadr's reaction: He called for reconciliation with the Sunnis. From the Post:

Sadr called for peaceful demonstrations, and reconciliation within Iraq's warring factions, to mark the minarets' destruction. "We declare a three-day mourning period . . . and shout Allahu Akbar (God is greater) from Sunni and Shiite mosques," Sadr said in a written statement, declaring that no Sunni Arab could have been responsible for the attack on the Shiite shrine.

Instead, he faulted the Iraqi government for failing to protect the landmark, and blamed the relentless violence in Iraq on the ongoing U.S. military presence.

Sadr also announced that his 30 members of parliament were suspending their membership in that body until the government of Iraq takes steps to rebuild the shrine. It's been in ruins for more than a year.

The Times notes that the U.S. and Iraqi governments this week decided to replace the guards, mostly Sunnis, with Shia forces:

Speaking on Al Jazeera television, Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, a prominent Sunni cleric, said the new guards had arrived at the shrine shouting sectarian slogans that may have provoked local Sunnis, in a sign that the attack was already being depicted as sectarian.

Prime Minister Maliki, of course, is already blaming "supporters of Saddam Hussein" for the attack. He imposed an indefinite curfew in Baghdad.

The head of Iraq's intelligence agency is hiding in the United States, fearing for his life, after a wave of assassinations by Iranian agents has killed at least 140 members of the Iraqi service. So reports David Ignatius in the Washington Post. Mohammed Shahwani, a longtime Iraqi military officer who cooperated with the United States in exile, is the man in question, and the service is the Iraqi National Intelligence Service. Lots has been written about this lately, but this is the first time I've seen a report about Iranian intelligence involvement in so many murders. Years ago, people close to Chalabi told me that the Shia government were complaining that the CIA was running INIS outside of Iraqi control, but that simply means that they hadn't let Chalabi and the Shia tied to SCIRI get their hands on it. Says Ignatius:

Shahwani is now in the United States. Unless he receives assurances of support from Maliki's government, he is likely to resign, which would plunge the INIS into turmoil and could bring about its collapse. ...

Shahwani's operatives discovered in 2004 that the Iranians had a hit list, drawn from an old Defense Ministry payroll document that identified the names and home addresses of senior officers who served under the former regime. Shahwani himself was among those targeted for assassination by the Iranians. To date, about 140 officers in the INIS have been killed.

According to Ignatius, the Shia regime has created a new intelligence service called the Ministry of Security that maintains close liaison with Syrian and Iranian intelligence. Big surprise.

It's long past the time for the United States to pretend that it has solution to the Rubik's Cube in Iraq, though it's still possible for administration to make things worse. So, now we are arming the Sunni resistance, or at least parts of it. Only last year, the entire focus of the U.S. counterinsurgency operation in Iraq was to crush the resistance. It didd't work, and Khalilzad started talking about how the main enemy was the Shia militias and sectarian killings. Then, around February, he switched, and started saying that the bad guys were the Sunnis again -- thus, the surge, aimed at ending Sunni resistance to the occupation. Now, the bad guys are Al Qaeda, and we're arming the Sunnis.

This would be funny if it weren't tragic. My own view is that rather than arming both sides in the Iraqi civil war, which is what we are doing by building Sunni militias, we ought to arm neither side -- in other words, we must stop arming the Shia-Kurdish army and police. And get out. (Getting out will include negotiating with the Sunni-led resistance for a ceasefire, but that's not the same thing are arming them!)

Of course,, the Shia religious parties and KUrdish warlords are frantic with opposition to the new policy of arming the Sunnis. "They are trusting terrorists," says Ali al-Adeeb, a Shia leader.

Prime Minister Maliki himself complained about the new policy, in an interview with Newsweek: "Some field commanders make mistakes ... by arming tribes sometimes, and this is dangerous because this will create new militias. I believe that the coalition forces do not know the backgrounds of the tribes. It is a job of the (Iraqi) government."

At the Pentagon, McClatchy reports, there is grumbling about the new policy:

At the Pentagon, at least six officers who served in Iraq shook their heads when asked about the idea of arming the Sunnis. They said they had little faith in a Sunni community that was aggressively killing their comrades just months ago.

Why did we spend all that capital disarming them last year?" asked one military officer who served in Iraq last year under former Iraq commander Gen. George Casey. "As a military man, I cannot fathom the logic of putting more weapons out there." The officer declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.

The McClatchy piece includes a funny quote from General Odierno, the surge-master, who was asked if the Iraqi government is concerned about the new policy: "Sure they are concerned," he said. "They want to make sure that we are not forming a Sunni militia that will fight the government."

What's shocking isn't that the United States is arming guerrillas from the resistance it spent years fighting. No, what's shocking is the utter bankruptcy of U.S. policy, which tacks this way and that in order to make a failing policy succeed. News flash: nothing will work.

Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, writing in the Post, ridicule the idea that the United States can favor the "good" Palestinians in the West Bank against the "bad" ones in Gaza: "Sticks for Gaza coupled with carrots for the West Bank will divide Palestinians, radicalize Gazans, provoke violence by those who are left out, and discredit those the United States embraces."

True. Somehow I picture President Bush reading that and saying, "Uh huh. And what's the downside?"

An operation by joint U.S.-U.K. forces in Maysan, south and east of Baghdad along the Iranian border, wasn't coordinated with local provincial officials. Maysan province is one of those provinces supposedly turned over to Iraqi security forces, meaning that the British and Americans handed control to the Shia militias. The Maysan operation killed dozens of people. One provincial security official, Latif al-Tamimi, told the Post that "occupation forces" launched the offensive without officials' knowledge. So here you have a major U.S. offensive denounced by the very government we're supposedly trying to protect, and one of the province's top officials calls the American troops "occupation forces." Can anything underscore the utter futility of the U.S. role in Iraq than that?

I don't quarrel with the idea that Iraq is the second most unstable, "failed" state in the world, as revealed in the latest (2007) Failed States Index put out by the Fund for Peace. (You can read the whole thing here.)

But I do quarrel with the view of Pauline H. Baker, the Fund's president, who says that their message is that Iraq will break up into pieces. "We have recommended ... that the administration face up to the reaility that the only choices for Iraq and how and how violently it will break up." That is a statement breathtaking in its arrogance. I don't know what Iraq experts the Fund consulted -- it isn't clear from its web site -- and Baker herself doesn't seem to have a lot of Iraq expertise. Yes, everyone knows things are bad in Iraq. But it's simply not true, despite what Joe Biden and Leslie Gelb think, that Iraq's break up is a foregone conclusion.

Obviously fully committed to recruiting Sunnis to the U.S. side, General Petraeus casts the entire point of the surge as a battle against Al Qaeda, in an interview with the London Times:

"They are attempting to establish a real al-Qaeda sanctuary in Iraq, a caliphate. Zarqawi (the former al-Qaeda leader in Iraq) stated that he intended for Baquba (the capital of Diyala) to become the new capital of his caliphate in 2006 shortly before he was killed."

The goal, he says, is to buy time in Washington to allow the mission (whatever it is) to continue: "I hope that we can put time back on the Washington clock. Al-Qaeda is keenly aware of the Washington clock. They are obviously going to have a surge of their own."

Of Al Qaeda, he says:

"An awful lot of their foreign fighters come through Syria. Eighty or so foreign fighters come through a month. That does not sound like much but every one of those is a potential suicide bomber. We think that 80 to 90 per cent of suicide bombers are foreign fighters. ... It is still led by foreigners called al-Qaeda Senior Leadership (AQSL). Our assessment is that this is the central front for al-Qaeda. They have a global war of terror, and Iraq is the central front. Whether you like it or not."

Besides Al Qaeda, Petraeus says the other bad guys, the Shia ones, are Iranian-backed:

"They are trained in Iran, equipped with Iranian (weapons), and advised by Iran. The Iranian involvement here we have found to be much, much more significant that we thought before. They have since about the summer of 2004 played a very, very important role in training in Iran, funding, arming."

Petraeus says that the Shia fighters are offshoots of Sadr's Mahdi Army. But he doesn't say anything about the Badr Brigades of the reorganized SCIRI (SIIC).

With anti-U.S. occupation forces, led by Sadr-linked militiamen, clashing with pro-U.S. forces tied to SCIRI (SIIC) in Nasiriya and Diwaniya, the Post today carries a puff piece promoting SCIRI and its suave front man, Adel Abdel Mahdi. It suggests that PM Maliki is getting wobbly, and it reveals that Abdel Mahdi tried to resign last week, amid growing political turmoil in Iraq.

The resignation gambit was leaked to the Post by SIIC-linked forces, and Abdel Mahdi is quoted in the piece posturing about the twin minarets in Samarra, which he compares ludicrously to the Twin Towers:

"The two minarets were as important to us as September 11, and we should be accountable to the people," Abdul Mahdi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "We should be doing more to move in a positive direction -- on corruption, accountability and defending the important sites."

Such grandstanding by Abdel Mahdi can only mean that he's angling for U.S. support (and probably has it) to replace Maliki when it finally becomes obvious that the Maliki isn't going to meet any "benchmarks." It's also a clear effort by SCIRI-SIIC to head off an anti-Maliki nationalist coalition that could include a wide range of parties outside the chief political axis of SCIRI and the Kurds.

But it's more and more evident that neither Dawa nor SCIRI have much political support in Iraq anymore. Among Shia, Sadr and the Fadhila party (and their allies) seem far more popular. Recent fighting in various Iraqi cities, including the two listed above, is pointing out this truth: that Sadr (and the Sadrists, including Fadhila) have the support of rank-and-file Shia, and SCIRI-SIIC rules by force of arms, through its Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, and by virtue of the fact that it controls many provincial and local government posts.

Yesterday the House passed an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Chris Shays, to reconstitute the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group--which produced what President Bush calls "Plan B-H." Last year, many Republicans hoped that the ISG would give the White House an opening to shut down the war. Instead we got "the surge." Will it work this time?

It passed 355-69. Of the 69 No votes, 55 were Republicans. Get the tally here.

Here's Rep. Tom Davis (R.-VA), supporting the Shays amendment:

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Multi-National Force Commander General David Petraeus will provide an assessment of Iraq this fall. The assessment will include the military, economic and political situation in Iraq. The assessment will be a key determinant for future U.S. involvement.

The debate over what to do in Iraq will continue and the Crocker-Petraeus assessment will be challenged. If the report is positive Crocker and Petraeus must provide specific signs of progress and lay out in detail how long and how many troops will be needed in Iraq. If the report is negative then Crocker and Petraeus should provide definitive steps on a phased withdrawal plan that reduces the number of lives lost.

Whatever the outcome of the Crocker-Petraeus assessment we need an independent validation of the assessment. This is why I am supporting Mr. Shays' amendment to reconstitute the Iraq Study Group. This bipartisan group, that provided observations and recommendations to the President last December concerning the situation in Iraq would be reengaged and provide the American people a bipartisan perspective of what we can expect for the future of Iraq.

With all the partisan debate we witness week in and week out in Washington, we must reconstitute this nonpartisan group, which has as its only goal, moving forward American interests.

In America, idiots rule. And not only in the White House: a Newsweek poll reveals that 41 per cent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein and Iraq were responsible for 9/11.

Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?

Yes: 41
No: 50
Don't know: 9 percent.

So it's 50-50. Just about like the result of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Coincidence?

PS It's getting worse. In 2004, in the same poll, only 36 per cent of the country answered idiotically.

In case you missed this: the Post reported (in Al Kamen's column) that shrapnel slammed into Ambassador Crocker's office in Baghdad, and he was in the office at the time.

Here's the quote from the Pentagon account of the incident:

Further to Watch Alert 1241, Embassy Baghdad reports Ambassador Crocker's office window was damaged by one IDF round, sending shrapnel into his office. The Ambassador was in the room at the time of the attack, but there were no injuries./blockquote>

It's true. Bud McFarlane, of Reagan administration and Iran-contra fame, was in Baghdad with an Anglican cleric, Canon Andrew White, for a meeting of Iraqi religious leaders. According to an op-ed by McFarlane in the Wall Street Journal, aides to Ayatollah Sistani and Muqtada Sadr were there, along with top Sunni clerics. And what makes it all the more interesting, says McFarlane, is that many of them strongly believed in holding Iraq together, in one piece. "They called it their 'nation,'" wrote McFarlane.

Major fissures are showing up all over the GOP on Iraq, and expect those fissures to widen into gigantic crevasses by late summer. Just a quick survey: just this week alone, Senator Lugar slammed Iraq policy, and the next day he was joined by Senator Voinovich. Last week, James Gilmore III, a centrist conservative candidate for president, suggested that it was getting close to pack up and go home. The pressure is building.

In the House too, there is some movement. At least 11 Republicans met with Bush to read him the riot act, and now Chris Shays (CT), Frank Wolf (VA) and Michael McCaul (TX) are demanding the restoration of the Iraq Study Group.

Yesterday, at the inaugural meeting of the Center for New American Security, a center-right Democratic-leaning thinktank, I asked Senator Hagel, the Nebraska Republican, if he's talked to his colleagues about breaking with the White House over Iraq, as he has done. His answer:

We in this business of politics represent where we come from. We represent you. And elected officials are not going to get too distant from their constituents. You know where the polls are going. The American people have left the president [on Iraq]. Most of my Republican colleagues, like Senator Lugar, are moving in that direction, like Senator Voinovich.

He went on to say that September is key, and that even before then, with the defense authorization bill, there will be a fight in July. Then in September the real fight will occur around the appropriations bill. And he added that he hopes that it will be settled before the early presidential season "locks Congress down into early political paralysis."

I asked him if he'd comment on the possibility for a veto-proof majority in the Senate. "Well, we'll see," he said. "It's evolving. We've got a long way to go."