The October Surprise That Could K.O. McCain

Well, technically it would be an August surprise, but if the recently renewed cease fire with Iranian-backed Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr falls through without update six months from now violence in the south Baghdad could skyrocket. The Jaish al-Mahdi, or "Mahdi Army" has been known to use the oh so infamous IEDs along with other harrassing small arms fire, but the real threat lies in the Shia Islamist traditional rogue death squads which will undoubtedly form as the true meaning of the Qu'ran is forgotten for the sake of political power. The Sunni's will be pissed.
So when you get one religious group whose name itself carries apocalyptic connotations, the Mahdi being a central firgure in Shia eschatology, and another broad group seeking unification behind an equally strong and charismatic leader, and you put them together in a struggle over a country carved out by Europeans, you get a lot of this crap. Oh, and the part of Iraq with all the oil is controlled by seperatists. That's pretty important too. They don't even fly the Iraqi flag, they use the Kurdistan flag on government buildings. It's like the country is falling through the hands of the dangerously centralized government; unstable and shifting with the slightest of wind, just like the golden Iraqi sand. In hindsight we should have seen it coming, but hindsight is always 20/20, right John McCain?

Maybe that cease fire will fall through and all hell will break loose in the country which was supposed to greet us with flowers. Maybe not though, we could always stick with the current situation and limit the nation to just 3 or 4 carbombs a week. If mere occupation is success, our standards have seriously dropped.