Deep breath:

The Sunni political party whose two most prominent leaders were disqualified from next month’s parliamentary elections in Iraq because of supposed ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party called Saturday for a boycott of the vote, raising fears of worsening sectarian tensions in an already volatile campaign.

The provocation poised by the zombie-debaathification commission is intense. But it would be so expressly against the Sunnis’ sectarian interest to boycott their second consecutive national election. There are indications all over the place that Sunni leaders recognize that, including Saleh Mutlak’s own sour views on a boycott. The civil war is too recent and too horrible a memory. But even flirting with a boycott — even after the obvious corruption of the Sunni-purge commission — is to confront a disaster by compounding it.

In Diyala, a prominent tribal leader in Baquba, Sheik Sadoon al-Dulaimi, said a boycott would only allow “non-patriotic parties” to gain control of the new Parliament.

“It will take us back to what happened in 2005,” he said.

Listen to the sheik. Chris Hill, this is when you earn your money.

Update, 1:20 pm: Gregg Carlstrom reports that the National Dialogue Front used the descriptive statements of Amb. Hill and Gen. Odierno that the commission is Iranian influenced to help justify its decision. That would provide Hill and Odierno with an awfully good opportunity to clarify to the NDF that they certainly didn’t mean they should drop out.