Getting out is always harder than getting in

And that's a good thing to remember for lots of life's situations.

Josh Marshall talks about obstacles to getting out of Iraq.

Our lack of effective power, as opposed to main force, of which we've got plenty, is what's pushing us to get out of the country in the first place. But our efforts to get out have further weakened our position, thus diminishing our ability to get out on our own terms. It's a vicious cycle, and as difficult to remedy as it is vicious.

Back on Wednesday the Post had a piece about how Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani [one of only five living grand ayatollahs and the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq] was largely responsible for scuttling our original plan to appoint the drafters of the constitution, rather than have them elected.

Now he's come out against the new plan for electing these folks through a complex series of town caucuses and called instead for direct nationwide elections.

It's pretty hard to fault Sistani's positions on democratic procedural grounds. But the bigger point, again, is our impotence in the face of his expressed views.

He's calling the shots; we're not.

And then there's the Interim Governing Council, the IGC.....

Their leverage ... Like I said, dark comic relief. We can't even get our puppets in line.

Juan Cole also reports on the situation here. Apparently, Bremer has gotten the Interim Governing Council to stand with him against Sistani.

What accounts for Bremer's success in getting the IGC to buck Sistani? First, it should be remembered that Aqila al-Hashimi was assassinated. A Shiite woman diplomat, she was the tie-breaker between the Shiites and the others on the 25-member IGC. With her gone, and with no formal replacement yet announced (though a Shiite woman dentist has been spoken of), the IGC does not have a Shiite majority. It is evenly split between Shiite members and others. In addition, one of the supposedly "Shiite" members is actually a Communist Party official, who may or may not care what a cleric like Sistani wants.

Hmmmm....it was to "our" advantage that al-Hashimi was assassinated. Lucky break.