We may well be watching the point at which the interim constitution begins being abandoned even in the absence of a new one, the point at which party politics and the interests of indigenous politicians overpower the technocratic dreams of the American political authority of 2003-2004. Paul Bremer had to slip out of Iraq in the middle of the night, and now his constitution may be making the same undignified exit.

Even if all this is somehow retrieved, the constitution could still be rejected in the referendum, and the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement is likely to go on anyway. Already Monday morning the wire services were reporting 9 killed in various places by guerrilla violence.

The real question isn't the constitution. The real question is actual, concrete politics. How do you keep the Kurds in without giving away the north? How do you bring the Sunni Arabs back in to ordinary politics? How do you satisfy the Shiites without implementing Islamic law as the law of the land? Those aren't even necessarily constitutional problems (Nigeria wrestles with similar issues every day, just in the framework of provincial statute). They are political ones. Resolving them requires compromises that the major political forces seem unwilling to make.