MALIKI CAN ONLY DELAY MOOKIE:

Iraq Reschedules Elections. Again. (Larry Kaplow, 9/24/08, Newsweek: Checkpoint Baghdad)

As he was installed in his new job as top commander in Iraq last week, Gen. Ray Odierno called the provincial elections "critical" for bringing stability and emphasized the expectation they would take place this year. The holding of provincial elections is one of the benchmarks Congress required the White House to use in measuring progress in Iraq.

But to the major Iraqi parties in power, the prospect of elections probably looks more like a threat. They're loath to admit it but members of mainstream Shiite parties worry they will lose governorships to loyalists of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. The Sunni minority leaders in the government fear they will lose seats in Sunni areas to upstart tribal factions who take credit for fighting off al Qaeda and barely participated in the vote the last time around.

In July, NEWSWEEK talked to Baha al-Araji, one of those disaffected Sadr followers in the parliament, and he accused the leading parties of seeking to keep pushing the date into next year. Then, he said, they will argue that it just makes sense to postpone the local vote and hold it along with national elections for parliament at the end of 2009. It seemed a little conspiratorial at the time but only elections by the new deadline will prove him wrong to suspicious Iraqis.