Just a few more Friedmans....

More hearts and minds...

As night fell on Baghdad, however, in a pattern seen for the last few days, there was more violence. A car bomb in the western Alam district killed five and wounded 17, police said, while clashes erupted between militia fighters and residents in the violent Sunni area of Amriya.

Addressing a heated parliamentary session on a day in which at least 30 other people were killed around Baghdad and an Iraqi diplomat was kidnapped, Ali al-Adib, from the prime minister's Dawa party said: "The country is sliding fast toward civil war."

U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad acknowledged that a security crackdown in Baghdad had not yet curbed violence.

"It has not produced the results they expected so far. The plan is being reviewed and adjustments will be made. No, it has not performed to the level that was expected," Khalilzad said in Washington in an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I believe that securing Baghdad is critical," he said. "Violent sectarianism is now the main challenge ... It's imperative for the new Iraqi government to make major progress in dealing with this challenge in the next six months.

There's something oddly familiar about the ambassador's assessment.....