Iraq tells US soldiers Thanks for dying for us but Were going on Vacation"

Iraqi Parliament Adjourns for August
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

Monday, July 30, 2007

(07-30) 12:30 PDT BAGHDAD, (AP) --


Iraq's parliament on Monday shrugged off U.S. criticism and adjourned for a month, as key lawmakers declared there was no point waiting any longer for the prime minister to deliver Washington-demanded benchmark legislation for their vote.


Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the final three-hour session without a quorum present and declared lawmakers would not reconvene until Sept. 4. That date is just 11 days before the top U.S. military and political officials in Iraq must report to Congress on American progress in taming violence and organizing conditions for sectarian reconciliation.


The recess, coupled with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's failure to get the key draft laws before legislators, may nourish growing opposition to the war among U.S. lawmakers, who could refuse to fund it.


Critics have questioned how Iraqi legislators could take a summer break while U.S. forces are fighting and dying to create conditions under which important laws could be passed in the service of ending sectarian political divisions and bloodshed.


But in leaving parliament, many lawmakers blamed al-Maliki.


"Even if we sit next month, there's no guarantee that important business will be done," said Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish legislator. The parliament had already extended its session by a month, having initially planned a recess for July and August.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/07/30/international/i094103D05.DTL&type=printable

full of fail is an understatement. I hope they gave thier soldiers some leave time too

Which would be great if our leaving would actually do anything to quell the violence on their parts. Our being there started it, our leaving certainly won't stop it.

This shit will probably take DECADES to sort out. Have a look at Lebanon in the past few decades? The most stable and most military-capable of the three are the Kurds. Who happen to have a rather large, capable and somewhat better U.S.-armed military just across the border that'd be more than happy to come in and straighten them out given the right set of circumstances.

The Shia outnumber the Sunnis rather severely in Iraq. Sunnis outnumber (and outearn) Shia overall in Islam. A sectarian civil war could spiral into something REALLY FUCKING AWFUL unless we can somehow manage to unfuck what we've so mindlessly fucked up. Iran wants nukes, Pakistan already has them.

Too late. Splitting Iraq into three pieces will only mean massive religious cleansing, as was seen in Yugoslavia, and will mean Turkey will definitely invade Kurdistan. Once Turkey invades Kurdistan, the entire region could explode because of the oil implications.

Even that may be difficult, because there must be an agreement on how to divide up the oil revenues and other resources.

Overall, I think that the war has had an effect similar to taking the lid of a pressure cooker suddenly, when a slow release of steam would have been better. The rate of change has been to fast for Iraq to cope with and the benefactors of the war may turn out to be Iran and the terrorists.