What the readers among us already knew. Iraq will get still worse.

Iraq is now becoming a true quagmire. Not that that's surprising in and of itself, but the Iraq policy has now created a situation where no possible result is likely to be better than the current poor situation.

If the constitutional referendum fails, the government will dissolve and the US will be de facto ruler of a country without a command structure which will be increasingly factionally violent. Not that we aren't already, but at least we've got a puppet.

If the referendum passes, all pretense of political action by the Sunnis will cease; their only mechanism left to influence the country will be increasing violence. Also, once the real government is seated by elections in December, I would expect the minority Kurds to follow suit as it becomes plain that the Shia plan to dominate policy.

Not only a civil war, but a three way civil war.

LATimes. (I'm linking to the Yahoo version cause it's non-subscription.)

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency gripping the country.

The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course.

But within the last two months, U.S. analysts with access to classified intelligence have started to challenge this precept, noting a "significant and disturbing disconnect" between apparent advances on the political front and efforts to reduce insurgent attacks.

Now, with Saturday's constitutional referendum appearing more likely to divide than unify the country, some within the administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, could actually strengthen the insurgency. .......

Vice President Dick Cheney has put it more succinctly. "I think … we will, in fact, succeed in getting democracy established in Iraq, and I think when we do, that will be the end of the insurgency," he told CNN in June.