Here is a testy exchange between Spencer Ackerman and Eli Lake (warning: some profanity).  Suffice it to say, it seems to me that advocating still more democracy in Iraq as a way of enforcing “accountability” on Maliki is quite a bad idea, because the confessional lines have already been drawn and another round of elections would probably tend to empower even more radical elements than the ones currently in office.  Speaking about “the Iraqi people” as if such a collective group existed any longer, if it ever really existed as a national group at any point, also suggests something of a disconnect from the how people in Iraq are organising politically and how they would organise politically.  Once the main national institutions were gutted or disbanded, it is not clear how elections could have produced anything other than sectarian and ethnic fragmentation, since it was principally the institutions of the state that constituted “the Iraqi nation” and compelled different groups to belong to some common identity.  Given their druthers, whether or not most Iraqis would choose civil war as such (and most civil wars are not chosen by majorities, but are thrust upon people by political leaders), the different groups in Iraq might very well choose some sort of political separation rather than reconciliation within the same polity.  This is not just because the last few years have sharpened the divides and not just because elections have politicised religious and ethnic identity, but because there is no common national identity that can plausibly serve as the basis for political unity to which all groups wish to subscribe.