"All the politicians are trying to prove that they care more about Iraqis than they do about Americans -- otherwise they know the people and the voters will not support them," said Ala Maaki, a senior lawmaker with Iraqi's largest Sunni political party. "I think we could see al-Maliki and Moqtada Sadr trying to one-up the other today and see who can take the strongest stand against the Americans."

is iraq's government falling apart?:
While many Shia accuse Al-Maliki of incompetence for his failure to end attacks by Sunni factions, especially by Al-Qaeda, Sunni groups blame him for failure to crackdown on Shia extremists, such as the Al-Mahdi militia, which is charged with torture, assassinations and execution-style slayings.

cockburn update (5/7):
The US and the Iraqi government are having some success in cultivating divisions between the fanatical partisans of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and the rest of the Sunni community. But overall, the five million Sunni community supports armed resistance to both the US and the Shia-Kurdish government.
(...) The Sunni rebellion that started in the summer of 2003 is too well established to be crushed. When insurgents are squeezed in one part of Baghdad, they move to another, or to a neighbouring province. The Kurds were able to destabilise Iraq for half a century despite suffering persecution and genocide, and Sunnis are well positioned to do the same.
(...) One casualty of the new plan is the authority of the Iraqi government. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, announced in Egypt that the construction of a wall around the Sunni district of al-Adhamiyah would stop, but without effect. An Iraqi army spokesman simply said that the Prime Minister had been misled. The Iraqi Defence Ministry is largely under American control - one senior Iraqi army official who obeyed a direct order from Mr al-Maliki late last year found himself jailed by US forces.
(...) The troops were said to have an order from the Shia-controlled Health Ministry to close the hospital, but the Americans insisted Naaman would be reopened. Although pro-resistance Sunni websites have claimed that 82 patients had been murdered, this has been impossible to verify.

al-maliki´s support waning:
Legislators from several parties told USA TODAY that al-Maliki lacks the support in parliament to push through laws, such as a plan to distribute oil revenues, that could reduce tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. Iraq's parliament has failed to pass major legislation since a U.S.-led security plan began on Feb. 14.
(...) "The present government is not competent," said Dawood, a Shiite legislator. "It's more or less paralyzed, inactive. I doubt very much that this government can continue in power much longer."
(...) Pending constitutional amendments on issues such as tax revenue sharing have stalled, said Ayad al-Samarrai, deputy chairman of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group. He said al-Maliki's poor reputation among Sunnis was partly to blame. "We don't see any progress" on sectarian reconciliation, al-Samarrai said.

report from iraq (cockburn):
The attacks are likely to speed the return of the Mehdi Army in Shia areas to provide protection. It was stood down by its leader, the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as the US-Iraqi security crackdown began on 14 February. When Iraqi army soldiers and a US patrol entered Sadriyah after the bombing they were met with jeers and stones.
(...) The US security plan has never had the political as well as the military components essential to success. It should have encouraged more Iraqi groups to enter the political process and eschew violence. In fact it has done the opposite. The US has been pushing the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to break with Mr Sadr, who has a very large following among the Shia majority. Mr Sadr withdrew his six ministers from the government this week saying that Mr Maliki had failed to set a deadline for a US troop withdrawal. But the Sadrists are also angry that US and Iraqi government troops have arrested 800 of their men, including Sheikh Qais Khazali, one of their leaders. Mr Sadr reportedly believes the Prime Minister reneged on an agreement not to purse the Mehdi Army if it did not fight.
(...) The soaring number of people being executed by the government since the death penalty was reintroduced in 2004 is condemned in a new report by Amnesty International. It says that 270 people are under sentence of death and more than 100 have been executed, almost all of them since the start of 2006. The report says many of them only confessed under torture.