Ending the ceasefire?

And making the casualties go up?

BAGHDAD —

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops but may lift the order if a planned Iraq-U.S. security agreement lacks a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, a spokesman said Thursday.

The statement by Sheik Salah al-Obeidi comes as al-Sadr plans to reveal details of a formula to reorganize his Mahdi Army militia by separating it into an unarmed cultural organization and elite fighting cells.

The announcement is expected during weekly Islamic prayer services on Friday.

Several cease-fires by al-Sadr have been key to a sharp decline in violence over the past year, but American officials still consider his militiamen a threat and have backed the Iraqi military in operations to try to oust them from their power bases in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

And here:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called off a mass demonstration set for Wednesday in Baghdad and threatened to formally end the seven-month cease-fire of his Mehdi Army militia.

In fighting Tuesday in al-Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, 12 people were killed and 27 wounded. At least 48 people have been killed and 176 wounded since Sunday, an Interior Ministry official said.

Eight of the 11 U.S. troops killed in Iraq on Sunday and Monday died in fighting in Baghdad.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the capital, the U.S. military said.

One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb, two by a rocket-propelled grenade and one by small-arms fire after a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle during a patrol in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

The deaths bring the U.S. death toll in the Iraq war to 4,024, including eight civilian Defense Department contractors.

[snip]

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, speaking Tuesday afternoon to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, said that "U.S. forces will remain in Iraq beyond December 31, 2008." At that time, he said, the U.N. resolution that allows U.S. troops to operate in Iraq will expire and be replaced by a status of forces agreement, commonly called a SOFA, requested by the Iraqis.

Crocker said it would cover the "basic authorizations and protections" to allow troops to continue operations but will not specify troop levels or establish permanent bases.

"We anticipate that it will expressly forswear them ... and it will not tie the hands of the next administration," he said.

Crocker also said Congress will be "kept fully informed," but he has previously made clear that the administration sees no role for Congress in the agreement's final approval.

Off topic but interesting are the article's number of deaths cited because this is what I get on the Iraq Casualties site:

U.S. Confirmed Deaths
Reported Deaths: 4134
Confirmed Deaths: 4134
Pending Confirmation: 0
DoD Confirmation List

And that's not even listing the defense contractors' deaths.

So what will the Bush administration do?

Bomb Iran probably.

I'm sure Bush will demand that this man be fired

He's too intelligent, educated and he said the no-no word: civil war:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Biddle, you just returned from a four week stay in Baghdad where you had been asked to advise General Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq. Did you come back with a sense that he has a workable idea on how to improve the situation in Iraq?

Stephen Biddle: I am very impressed with the general's ability. I think he is an extremely able public servant. If anyone is able to make the best of this, it's him.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: General Petraeus is known to be an expert in counter insurgency. In fact the entire administration seems to think that this should be the focus. You on the other hand have argued that counter insurgency is not what is needed in Iraq. Why?

Biddle: A classical ideological insurgency is a war of ideas in which a sub-national group is challenging the ideas by which the government runs the country. In this kind of war of ideas, you can in principle win by changing people's ideas. Given that, the classical strategy for waging counter insurgency is oriented around winning hearts and minds. You engage in a process of political reform in which you introduce democracy to make the government's ideas legitimate. You engage in a campaign of economic development assistance. And you try and train an indigenous military to wage the war. All those strategies are what the Bush Administration's approach to Iraq has been. They make some sense, if the problem you are trying to solve is a classical ideological insurgency. Except, Iraq is not.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is then?

Biddle: It's a communal civil war in which the war is not fought over a set of ideas. Rather, it is about the survival and self interest of communal groups within the nominal state. Sunnis are not fighting for an idea of what's best for all Iraqis; they are not trying to persuade Shiites that a Sunni government would be good for them. They are fighting for the self interest of Sunnis against the self interest of Shiites -- and vice versa. Because it is not a war of ideas you cannot expect to win it by changing people's minds. It's a war of identity. Identities can't change in the way minds can.

He doesn't see leaving Iraq anytime soon, though, on moral grounds. In his mind, we have to stay and police the cease-fire. With the delicate balance of power between Shia and Sunni, an overbalance in anything could mean extermination:

With respect to the power sharing compromise, the problem is that the stakes for each side are literally existential. They are afraid that if the other side gets control of the state the result might be genocide. The kind of compromise the playbook calls for by definition implies ceding power -- thus compromising with people who you think are threatening you with genocide. If you miscalculate and give up too much power, the result is extermination. So the downside risk is cosmic. By contrast, refusing to compromise means to have an ongoing, chronic low level bloodletting, which isn't great -- but probably looks a lot better than genocide. So we have a recipe for stalemate.

Stalemate = ongoing, chronic low level bloodletting = quagmire. Lovely.