Iraqi News

This week, Iraq'a parliament adjourned without acting on a critical piece of election law. This has apparently p-ssed of the Awakening Movement -- that merry band of heavily armed citizens that the US has been arming and paying for the last year. I quote the dire prediction of the informative Abu Aardvark site which is a great source for news from Iraq:

We are potentially approaching a moment of truth. The consequences of building up these forces outside of the structures of the Iraqi state, while stringing them along with promises that require Iraqi government acquiesence to deliver may be coming due. I know well that US military commanders have been far more attentive to these issues than have the cheerleaders, and MNF-I and Ambassador Crocker have been working as hard as they can to resolve them. Their failure to deliver a compromise on the provincial elections law and their failure to deliver meaningful progress on SOI integration both suggest the limits of American influence in Iraq - a lesson which the advocates of "strategic patience", who continue to view American decisions as the only ones which really matter, never seem to digest.