Maliki cracks down....

The official story is that the government of Nouri al Maliki arrested 35 (some high ranking) Sunni members of the Interior Ministry who allegedly were planning to reconstitute the Baath Party, but I'm having trouble separating this event from the internal sectarian politics.

The arrests were carried out by "an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki," and serve a secondary purpose of getting rid of all the highly ranked Sunnis in the Interior Ministry appreciably close to the next election.