It's Official, The Escalation Will Fail

I say this not because of the obvious weakness in the plan, or the overall inability of the US armed forces to do the job (we lack the manpower), but because Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, at the urging of Bush's pal Ahmad Chalabi, has decided that he likes the Civil War and wants it to continue.

The most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq has rejected an American-backed proposal to allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to return to government service, an aide to the cleric said Monday. The rejection by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, appears certain to fuel hostility between the majority Shiites and the former ruling Sunni Arabs, since many Sunni Arabs say they were unfairly purged from the government in the clampdown on the Baath Party.

And as long as Sistani wants civil war, there will be civil war.