Iraq Uncivil.  

Iraq's al-Maliki government is a hand-maiden to the Tehran Twelvers, and al-Maliki, I am told, is Tehran's viceroy. Tehran shows its hand on purpose when it orders 500 plus Sunni lords banned from the March 7 elections. It is a cunning provocation.  Tehran communicates that it will ignite Iraq's Anbar and Baghdad provinces -- where the Baathists and their cronies live with their same grievances of having lost Saddam's favor -- if and when the US brings hard sanctions against Iran. The Obama administration understands the provocation and threat and rushes VPOTUS Biden to sit side by side with General Odierno (always the military weighty, always the stick and the carrot) in order to confer with Maliki. The quid pro quo is that the US will seek to re-indict the Blackwater suspects.  Slim chance.  It is not enough.  Maliki makes his point; so does Tehran. The Iraqis are shedding the need to be vcivil.  Thursday 21, Malcolm Hoenlein introduced me to an Iraqi Jew, Maurice Shohet, who told of deliberate abuse of ancient Jewish sites in Iraq by order of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities.   Who lost Iraq?  George Bush lost Iraq with the incomplete and expedient surge.  But POTUS Obama will be blamed.