Indeed, on the eve of the bombing of the Golden Mosque, Khalilzad suggested publicly that Washington was prepared withdraw its "billions of dollars" in support to Iraq's security forces, declaring, "We are not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian."

That warning, in particular, provoked bitter reactions among Shiite leaders after the bombing. SCIRI's powerful leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who has long complained about U.S. efforts to curb the Badr Brigade, charged that Khalilzad had "contributed to greater pressure (on the Shiites) and gave a green light to terrorist groups, and he therefore bears a part of the responsibility."

"It's very clear that the Shiites are interpreting this chain of events as evidence that the Americans are weak and can't protect Shiite interests," Cole told IPS. "And now Americans are having to come back to the Shiites and ask them to be magnanimous and give away a lot of what they've won in elections."

"It was always going to be a very hard sell, but now it's an impossible argument; Shiites aren't going to give away any power at all at this point," he said, adding that, given the mathematics of putting together a government, "it's possible that there could be a hung parliament, the government would collapse, and you'd have to go to new elections. And that would be a disaster in the present circumstances."