Last week's protests in Basra appear to have ended Haider al-Abadi's bid to return as Iraq's prime minister once coalition negotiations wrap up. Al-Abadi had already been reeling after his bloc finished third in May's parliamentary elections and the reported defection of some of his allies afterward. But the final nail in the coffin was probably hammered in on Sept. 11 when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, said neither of the country's two previous prime ministers -- al-Abadi and Nouri al-Maliki -- should be the country's next leader....
