THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS. As long as TNR is trying to find the pony in Iraq, it's worth observing that the U.S.-sponsored Maliki government has just escalated the civil war tremendously. Maliki has just issued an arrest warrant for Harith al-Dhari, the leader of the most prominent Sunni organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars. This is exactly analogous to Paul Bremer's disastrous decision to shut down Moqtada al-Sadr's newspaper in March 2004, which unleashed the Sadrist insurgency. Except, since there was no civil war in March 2004, this is much worse. It will be seen as -- and, more importantly, is -- a strike by the government against all Sunnis. Laura may be more right about a tilt to the Shiites than she realizes. Someone in the U.S. military or the Bush administration must have had known about this latest disaster beforehand.
--Spencer Ackerman
