Clampdown

So, it looks like the Iraqi government is staging a security clampdown in an effort to turn the tide on the civil war (or, as the NYT put it, the "sectarian cleansing" -- a term that earns the O'Brien Award as far as I'm concerned).

Even if we manage to create a police state in Iraq, the Neoconservative/Neoliberal Holy Grail of "Saddam Without Saddam" -- it still seems like it won't be enough, with the sticky problem of that Shiite majority and all.

My plan (and others, although I've been spouting it since 2002, not that you'd know, because I wasn't blogging it) remains creating an Iraqi Federation, with Baghdad as a shared capital, and the oil revenues held in a UN-brokered trust that distributes revenues proportionally to the components of the federation, or else equally, if that's more diplomatically acceptable. Put some UN peacekeepers there to moderate the disputes that arise, with some kind of safeguard against Saudi and Iranian interference in their politics.

Seems like the only thing that would address the issues at hand and defuse the civil war.