There’s been some talk recently about partitioning Iraq. People have been pointing at the Biden-Gelb Plan and because things have been going so badly that plan looks more and more attractive. That plan calls for a “soft partition” of Iraq with a central government mostly relegated to administering the pennies of oil revenue that Mr Cheney’s Iraq plan will allow them while the three Iraq “entities,” Sunni West, Kurdish North, and Shiite everything else deal with their internal problems and attempt to live with their neighbors.

Simon Jenkins, writing in the Times came out for the idea more than a year ago.

We should not have gone to Iraq because going to Iraq implied staying and staying implied leaving. Now begins the leaving, and it will be bloody. All else is an illusion.

This weekend another Iraqi government, the third in three years, entered office under American guns in Baghdad’s green zone. Ibrahim al-Jaafari gives way to Nouri al-Maliki, though neither the defence nor internal security posts are filled. These are posts that matter, with their murky unofficial links to police, militias and Baghdad death squads.

The reason they are unfilled is that post-withdrawal Iraq is already up and running. Power has seeped away from the coalition and its still puppet ministers. It has moved out onto the streets of Baghdad and Basra — and into the morgues.

Of course, Mr Jenkins was a bit premature:

The jungle drums can read the signs. The British are back in helmets and tanks in the south, the Americans are back bombing and strafing villages in the west. The coalition has lost any ability to guarantee security to the Iraqi people, who must look elsewhere. In Iraq, optimism may always be a virtue but it has become fantasy.

This place is a failed state. There is no rule of law. Murder is unpunished. No foreigner dares to move except by air. Any Iraqi risks his life working away from home — and women risk their lives working at all. Interpreters wear balaclavas. Vendetta killings come not daily but hourly, measured only by body counts. Professionals are decamping to Jordan in greater numbers even than under Saddam. Water, power and petrol supplies are also worse.

The British have since retrenched, abandoning all of Basra except for the airport in their intended departure probably by the end of this year. Americans are no longer bombing and strafing in the west. There’s not all that much left to destroy as far as we know, although Western journalists and photographers don’t go there much because it’s far too dangerous. The ”Anbar Awakening” is staggering on spindly legs after the killing two weeks ago of Sheik Sittar. Just when we thought we‘d caught a break, too.

The US Senate decided just the other day that this was indeed the best plan for Iraq.

Showing rare bipartisan consensus over war policy, the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a political settlement for Iraq that would divide the country into three semi-autonomous regions.

The plan, conceived by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), was approved 75-23 as a non-binding resolution, with 26 Republican votes. It would not force President Bush to take any action, but it represents a significant milestone in the Iraq debate, carving out common ground in a debate that has grown increasingly polarized and focused on military strategy.

The Biden plan envisions a federal government system for Iraq, consisting of separate regions for Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations. The structure is spelled out in Iraq's constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution.

This is another of those non-binding “sense of the Senate” matters – the kind we’re only allowed to discuss if the Republicans want the votes cast. That’s how you know it’s not in the best interest of either Iraq or the United States, but would be very good for that political Party in the future. After all, someone’s got to be blamed for the eventual crash and burn of the US in the Middle East.

Unsurprisingly, the people whose lives we’re screwing around with are not quite so happy about the matter.

BAGHDAD, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday a U.S. Senate resolution calling for the creation of separate Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish federal regions in Iraq would be a disaster for his country.

"They should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty," Maliki told Iraqi state television on his flight back from the United Nations General Assembly.

"They shouldn't be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region."

Maliki also called on the Iraqi parliament to meet and respond formally to the non-binding resolution, passed by the Senate on Wednesday, which called for the creation of "a federal system of government and ... federal regions".

The Gulf States Council doesn’t think much of the idea either:

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups six Gulf Arab states allied with the United States, also criticised the resolution, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

"Just talk of Iraq's division would have severe consequences not only for Iraq but also for regional security and stability as well as world peace," the agency quoted GCC Secretary-General Abdul-Rahman al-Attiya as saying.

I’m unclear how we would have the authority to effect this soft partition since Iraq is supposedly a sovereign state, but Maybe Senator Biden and his Republican friends are thinking of asking the Parliament to attend a meeting to discuss the matter and stationing a Blackwater gunsel behind each parliamentarian during the discussion and voting. That’s the ultimate political logic in Iraq, after all.

As Juan Cole notes other leaders – the religious ones – don’t like the idea either:

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala south of the capital, called the Senate resolution "a step toward the breakup of Iraq." He said Iraqis of all religions and ethnicities should live at peace in a united country. He also called on the Arab states, especially the Arab countries neighboring Iraq, to prevent any such partition. He said, "It is a mistake to imagine that such a plan will lead to a reduction in chaos in Iraq; rather, on the contrary, it will lead to an increase in the butchery and a deepening of the crisis of this country, and the spreading of increased chaos, even to neighboring states."

I don't think Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani likes the Senate plan very much.

The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars also denounced the plan, but said it came as no surprise, since the break-up of Iraq had been the motive for the US invasion of that country in the first place. The AMS said that the resolution issued from a well-known wing of the present American administration and from the Zionist lobby.

As Dubhaltach, of Gorilla's Guides, mentioned in a comment yesterday, Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, is the one Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani turns to for "heavy lifting" when there are political overtones.

Joe Biden is “a well-known wing of the present American administration?

Ouch.