Iraq: More Bombs, More Violence as the Bush administration steps away from democracy

The lead on the frontpage NYTimes piece this morning is certainly important,

The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total of the war, offering more evidence that the anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen despite the killing of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Along with a sharp increase in sectarian attacks, the number of daily strikes against American and Iraqi security forces has doubled since January.

That is significant, but it's the part down at the very bottom that caught my eye.

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

I think that the fall of the Maliki government is a real possibility. With the ministry posts spread among the groups, the fracture lines are obviously already there. We're just one event away from one of the groups pulling out.

So what's the plan? Is the US plan to back a strongman? An Iranian backed Saddam Hussein?

All this. All that our two countries have been through, the deaths, the killings, the money, and the blood, and that's the outcome.

Also: The WaPo has had two stories in the last two days about the increases in violence throughout the country as the US brings troops back into Baghdad to pacify four neighborhoods. In Mosul (-3,000 US troops, page 2,) and throughout the small villages outside Baghdad.

And, still, to this day...

Unsure of the loyalties of Iraqi forces, U.S. officers sometimes lie to Iraqi army commanders about where they are going on joint missions and require Iraqi soldiers to give up their cellphones before leaving camp. Police are distrusted even more.

Find me an area of Iraq that's working(or even trending in the right direction.) Politics, security, Iraqi forces' training, public services, the economy, crime,....

We have destroyed this country and these people. It will take them decades, and now it sounds like we may give them a Shia Saddam Hussein.