With all this talk of a "salvation government", perhaps it's just about time for a come to Jesus meeting. (I especially liked the idea of a CTJM about "programmers not writing clean code.")

Let the coup plotting begin?

So plainly disaffected have the Americans become with Mr. Maliki that he used a telephone call with Mr. Bush last month to ask if the White House planned to unseat him ... after picking up rumors in the Green Zone government compound that American officials were feeling out Iraqi politicians on the possibility of replacing the Maliki administration with a “national salvation government” to be headed by an unnamed “Shiite strongman.”

You know, like Mushy:

The best we can hope for ... in the near term is a rational dictator like Pervez Musharraf.

These rumors have been circulating for months now ...

Iraqi Official Warns Against Coup Attempt

Hadi al-Amiri, a member of parliament from Iraq's most powerful political party, said in a speech in the holy city of Najaf that "some tongues" were talking about toppling Maliki's Shiite-led government and replacing it with a "national salvation government, which we call a military coup government." He did not detail the allegation.

The End of Maliki? Will a Coup Unravel Iraq?

And so, now there are rumors all over the place, in Washington, in Baghdad, in other places, that there are forces trying to come up with a non-democratic solution, some sort of coup d'etat, some sort of military takeover that would oust the elected government. It could be done under a constitutional fig leaf, let's say, if Maliki were to resign in favor of some junta of national salvation. It could be done in the middle of the night by some enterprising colonel or general, where the United States would look the other way.

I don’t think any of this could happen without American support, but I do know that there are a number of people inside the Baker commission, within the U.S. government, in the CIA and elsewhere, who are thinking about this. And just the other day, I spoke to Salah al-Mukhtar, who is a Baathist and former Iraqi official, who said that there are rumors all over Jordan that the CIA has been going around looking -- the military going around looking for a general or two, who could take over in the event of a coup d'etat in Baghdad.

Forward together?

A senior Baathist official who attended a conference of clans, parties and militia held recently in Amman says that participants in the conference gave their demands to US authorities in Iraq. The demands include the formation of a "national salvation government" and the disarming of all militia. The Baathist official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Americans promised to form such a "salvation government" sometime after mid-October.