Sadr Pulls Cabinet Ministers

Moqtada is causing more trouble. As of today, he's pulled his six cabinet ministers out of the government. So much for a government of national unity, eh?

This has happened before, and almost certainly wont topple the government, but once again we see that the troop surge, while not decreasing violence around the country (and hardly in the capital), has succeeded in exacerbating the instability and thereby hampering necessary political progress.

Speaking of political progress, Fox News Sunday (video) provided a nice litany of promised political acts of reconciliation that have yet to come to pass:

• No Oil Revenue Sharing Law - this would prevent the Sunnis from feeling like they will share in the riches, thereby decreasing the motivation to blow yourself up.
• No DeBaathification Reconciliation - re enfranchising the thousands of Iraqis that were only in the Baath Party out of political necessity, once again decreasing the support base for the insurgency
• No Local Elections Set - Local control, as the Constitution guarantees, will give a larger set of people a stake in maintaining stability
• No Amended Constitution - the only reason the Sunnis agreed to ratify the Constitution was the assurance (from our Ambassador, no less) that the Constitution would be modified to address their concerns.

Despite all the talk of "political progress" that Iraq is making (to make up for the lack of "security progress"), I can't seem to find any since the formation of the national unity government after the last set of elections. Where are the results? The Maliki government seems to constantly confirm that they are not interested in making the hard decisions and concessions necessary to achieve a peace, and they don't feel required to make those concessions because they know that the American military is propping up the government while literally protecting their hides.

Perhaps using the Democratic Congress's anti-war stance as a threat could get them in gear?