Maliki struggles and sinks

Alot of this AP story is subjective, but it offers a pretty broad sense of the political threats to the Maliki government.

U.S. officials here must issue progress reports to Congress next month and again in September, and al-Maliki finally may have run up against an implied, if not stated, deadline.

But with parliament likely to take a summer break in August, al-Maliki has only six weeks left to push through the legislation — not an easy task given the slow pace of work and unresolved differences over the draft laws.

Al-Maliki's domestic backers, the Shiites and Kurds, are growing unhappier by the day about the decision-making monopoly the prime minister and close aides have accrued to themselves.

They may not act against him now, but they may be emboldened soon given his vulnerability and the unusually harsh criticism of the government over the bombing by Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose every word is waited on by Iraq's Shiites.

If the US were to reduce the violence to zero for the remainder of "the surge," that still wouldn't resolve alot of the political threats to the Maliki government. The struggle for power is deeper than the violence.

If you're watching the politics of Iraq closely, this is worth a read.

(Oh, and this article doesn't mention some of the longer term problems facing Maliki like the disposition of Kirkuk, the Turks and the PKK on the northern border, and internal Shia struggle for power.)