Sunni exit plan

Worth considering. Reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

-- A troop pullout from most urban areas and an end to military checkpoints and raids. "The Americans and British must leave all residential areas," said al-Rawi. "This is very sensitive for our feelings. When they retreat to military bases outside the major cities, the Iraqis will no longer be meeting military tanks and trucks in the streets and highways, and they will no longer be afraid their home will be invaded at night."

-- Overhaul of the Iraqi Army and National Guard. Although the White House and Democrats alike say they want to turn over security duties to the Iraqi Army and National Guard as soon as possible, Sunni Arabs point out that these two institutions are almost completely composed of members of their ethnic enemies -- the Kurdish peshmerga and the Shiite militias. "These people want to humiliate the Sunni," al-Hashimi said. "The Army and National Guard must be professionalized. They cannot be dominated by members of the party militias."

Over the past two years, U.S. officials have alternately recruited and purged Sunni Arab officers and troops. The problem with the Sunni Arabs, the Americans say, is that they are heavily infiltrated by the insurgency, while the Kurds and Shiites are dependably loyal to the U.S.-backed Baghdad government.

-- Release of prisoners. The number of Iraqi prisoners in American military custody has grown rapidly in recent months, with as many as 15,000 Iraqis behind bars, according to U.S. estimates....

-- Amnesty for pro-Baathist, radical Islamist and hard-line nationalist groups, while excluding al Qaeda. Former top officials of the Hussein government chafe under the law that has outlawed membership in -- or even verbal support for -- the Baath Party. "There must be a legal way for all those people opposed to the American presence to be organized legally," said Nadhmi. "Otherwise they will fight." Several top leaders of the Islamic Clerics Association have been arrested by U.S. troops, and several have been killed in mysterious circumstances by gunmen who the association says are Shiite death squads.

-- Negotiations with the "resistance." Sunni leaders have frequently met with U.S. officials in Baghdad to try to coax them to talk with the guerrillas. They draw a line between what they call the "resistance," by which they mean Iraqi fighters who attack only U.S. and Iraqi troops, and the Sunni extremists linked to al Qaeda who have spread terror with car bombs and suicide attacks against Shiite civilians.