Another Setback in Iraq

Today, a parliamentry session was postponed after the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds failed to agree on their candidates for prime minister, president, and five other top posts. After the uncertainty over the Shiite prime minister, al-Jaafari, new candidates were going to be picked by the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. The parliament was then going to vote for the person to fill the positions. However, the parties failed to pick their candidates in time.

Before this announcement, Shiite official Hussain al-Shahristani told Sunni and Kurdish leaders that his bloc, which controls 130 of the 275 parliament seats, would decide what to do about al-Jaafari “within the coming two days”. Majority Shiites have been giving similar assurances for the past two weeks, and it is unclear how soon the issue will be settled. (according to MSNBC)

The fight over al-Jaafari has heightened friction among the rival parties, raising the deadlock over the other top jobs.

The death toll for this month is already 47, compared with 31 for all of March.

The situation in Iraq is getting worse and worse. More and more Americans are dying. American officials believe "the best way to stem the violence is for the Iraqis to establish a government comprising Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, paving the way for the United States to start withdrawing its 133,000 troops". This setback is just the latest of many. And I'm afraid that it'll be a long time before American troops are withdrawn. It doesn't seem like the sectarian violence is going to end any time soon, and forming a government seems nearly impossible.