Missing: a functional Iraqi state

Maliki also proposed that ex-army officers be welcomed back into the military – a potential way to rebuild Sunni national allegiance and drain the insurgency.

But a recent memo detailing Maliki's shortcomings by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley offers a more accurate picture of the US assessment of the Iraqi leader, analysts say. That, they add, explains why Bush last week welcomed other Iraqi figures to the White House.

One problem is that in its push to make Iraq a "beacon of democracy" for the Middle East, the Bush administration pushed for elections that, while providing a government, revealed a divided society with little experience in democratic governance.

"An entity [is] there in the form of an elected government. It's just not terribly functional," says Judith Yaphe, a former CIA Middle East analyst now at the National Defense University here. "We can hardly just disregard what we helped create, so we are increasing the pressure as a sort of one last chance."

Ms. Marr, a frequent visitor to Iraq who meets with all political groups, sees signs that the factions are "trying to pull back from the brink." Compromise appears within reach on legislation to divide oil revenue among Iraq's regions, which divide mostly along ethnic lines. Settling the oil-revenue issue is considered a key to establishing guideposts for an emerging federalism.

But doubts are multiplying over whether such decisions will still matter amid conditions many analysts describe as civil war. "Compromise is a new concept," Marr says, "and there are no guarantees they are going to learn fast enough."

The "learning curve" question may have also caught up with the military. "A truly national army could be created over 10 to 15 years, but we don't have that kind of time," Mr. Lang says. "Other national institutions just aren't there."

A "reestablishment of reality in Iraq," as Lang calls it, explains some of the provocative ideas under consideration. One idea, the "80 percent solution," calls for relying on the Shiite majority (65 percent of the population) and the geographically separate Kurdish minority (15 percent) to bring order, while abandoning the Sunnis. But Saudi Arabia has warned against that. It sees such an option as delivering Iraq to Iran on a platter, and warns the US it might enter the conflict on the side of their brethren Sunnis if the US abandons them.

A political solution must include secular Sunnis such as former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Ms. Yaphe says, in part because that is where any firm sense of a strong central government resides. Excluding "chief troublemakers" like anti-American Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr and the ex-Baathists in the insurgency, Marr warns, does not mean they will just go away.

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