Plus, paranoia about Fallujah and that Aug. 6 memo

I'd been meaning to do an item on Sistani.org, but fellow Kerryphobe Marc Cooper got to it first, and does a fine, preemptive job. (Where was Wonkette? Asleep at the wheel?) ...  I contend, though, that Cooper gravely overstates the severity of the Grand Ayatollah's prominently-discussed rule against masturbation. Remember, a law is only as strong as the penalties for violating it! ...  ....  Cooper also has more serious things to say about Iraq, including a link to this useful Micah Sifry post that places him in the mini-tsunami of pundits floating the idea of quick elections. ... Backfill: Hesiod blogged some of the other 'Ask-Sistani' entriesweeks ago. ... 11:36 P.M.

Too fast ... or too slow? The press is acting as if the key question in Iraq is "why turn over sovereignty so soon?" But isn't the question that begs to be answered "Why hold elections so late?" Why does it take sixlongmonths after June 30 to have a vote? Why not, like, two months? ... We're now desperately looking for a "legitimate interim government" to hand over power to. But Americans should know that the only legitimate government is going to be an elected government.So why not get on with it? Hand over power to some (U.N.-led?) caretaker group that doesn't have to be perfect because its only goal will be to hold elections in a matter of weeks. Or delay the American handover until August 15, at which point sovereignty will be transferred to the winner of elections held the week before. ...

Morton Abramowitz raises this possibility in the most provocative of today's "What To Do?" pieces, though even he seems to feel it would entail huge risks. But if elections were held quickly, wouldn't the Sistani faction win? Isn't that the best we can hope for? (Fareed Zakaria, in his what-is-to-be-doner, advocates doing virtually anything to win Sistani's blessing for the unelected interim government. If we're sucking up to him, why not just have an election to produce a government he controls?) ...

An early election would make it clear to all Iraqis that any disruptive violence was not designed to drive out the occupying infidels but rather to disrupt the election campaign and prevent Iraqis from determining their own fate. An early election would give voice and power to the so-called "silent majority" of pro-moderation Iraqis that polls show exists, before continued occupation erodes more of their moderation. ...

I'm not an Iraq expert (though I have played one on TV!), but I don't completely understand the U.S. reluctance to hold quick elections, unless the Bush administration still entertains the fantasy of turning over power to Ahmad Chalabi. (Was the purpose of Bremer's June 30 transition to an unelected government designed precisely to avoid elections for another half year and give people we picked--i.e. non-legitimated people--a leg up?) And the "delay the transition/stick it out" position of Hillary and Gen. McCaffrey seems completely ill-conceived. Delay until what? Until we turn the whole population against us? ...

Obvious objections: 1) It takes time to negotiate a constitution. More time than it takes to negotiate the alchemical "legitimate" unelected interim government and a constitution? Anyway, a process could be established that would allow the constitution to be changed later. 2) A civil war might break out: True. But our troops are still in the vicinity. We could always go back in if the situation degenerates. A civil war might break out under the slow-election" scenario too. Indeed, it woould have more time to break out before the formation of a legitimate (elected) government. ....

Unthinkable thought: Keep this between us, but would a violent-but-short Shiite vs. Sunni civil war (in which the U.S. was not involved) be the worst thing that could happen? Just askin'! It might be the essential predicate to a rough ethnic and religious balance of power. Or it might produce a stable, de facto partition. ... 10:32 P.M.

The grimmest lesson of Fallujah? Will any democratic government we could conceivably leave behind in Iraq be strong enough to stop Sunni towns like Fallujah--filled with well-armed, well-trained America-hating young men--from becoming ongoing hotbeds of terrorist plotting? The lesson of recent events in Iraq would seem to be a pessimistic one in this regard.  (You'd need a strong, non-American military force able to thoroughly police Fallujah and Tikrit. But the Iraqi national forces haven't exactly proven to be a mighty hammer. And the Sunnis, in a loose federal system, seem unlikely to want to crack down on their own.) ... That's true even if the Marines are able to completely clean out the current Fallujah "vipers' nest"--something that also looks increasingly unlikely, given the political pressure for a cease-fire. ... It means that the Iraq War--even if we basically succeed in nation-building--could result in the creation of a new series of towns that --like the towns on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border--are a terrorist Petri dish.  If that's the outcome, then in one respect at least we will have succeeded in replacing one terror threat (Saddam) with another, no? .... 12:42 P.M.

The scariest thing in the just-released Aug. 6 presidential briefing isn't the too-vague-to-freak-Bush-out warning of suspicious activities ("consistent with" hijackings "or other types of attacks"). It's the suggestion that Ahmed Ressam, convicted of plotting to blow up LAX, may have been only loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda:

Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation.