You don't get promoted to Grand Ayatollah for nothing.

Captain's Quarters comments on a report that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has defeated a partitioning of Iraq:

The Shi'ites had jealously viewed Kurdish semi-independence for years and eagerly pursued this proposal. With hardly any effort, Sistani swatted it down almost immediately. His pronouncement, as announced by Mashhadani, ordered the leading faction's politicians to stop considering the plan, and Mashhadani sounded happy to comply. He acknowledged that the country did not have a strong enough security apparatus to hold together in such a structure, and his allies quickly fell into line.

Obviously the people of Iraq as well as the Grand Ayatollah have more common sense than the American media gives them credit for having. A plan to break up Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions is a really dumb idea, partly because some American liberals were hyping such a plan as a cure-all for America's Iraqi quagmire, and partly because the one thing that all factions in Iraq can certainly agree on is what the borders of Iraq are at present. Besides, do we really want to leave behind a weak, rump Shi'ite state as a sitting duck for an Iranian Anschlusss?

Liberals should also remember that a weak confederal state is a prime target for a Right-wing coup launched by a very political military figure.