[tobyhill]

Maliki just seems too weak to be able to even take the baby steps needed and he’s barely crawling so it may be time to just wipe out the towns one by one regardless how many civilians get caught in the crossfire.

[cookcounty]

"Maliki just seems too weak to be able to even take the baby steps needed"

He's weak because the constitution makes him weak. I don't know what to do about it now, but it would have been better if we'd written the constitution for them (a la MacArthur in Japan) and then stipulated a strong executive. It's hard enough to transition to democracy without a constitution that mandates weak, easily sabotaged leadership.