What more can anyone say about this than that it’s awful?

Al-Hayat’s Jihad Al-Khazen warns that “if the Iraqi political situation does not clear up during the next 48 or 72 hours, then it will most definitely explode.” But he’s optimistic because the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and The Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) withdrew support for Al-Jaafari and because the interim government has drawn plans for a new National Security Council that will distribute responsibility for internal security more broadly. The idea is that these developments will help mollify Sunnis.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, I say. Where the government doesn’t control the streets, who heads that government is important, but only secondarily. The bombs that killed 85 people yesterday and dozens more today are shaping Iraq’s immediate future more than the formation of a new council in the nascent government—to everyone’s detriment. If one pattern has emerged over the past three years, it’s that Iraq reliably gets worse when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. I’m afraid it can get still worse, and will, before it gets better.

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