Our crap politics; Update: Iraqi ambassador laments the impending pullout

posted at 10:03 pm on July 17, 2007 by Allahpundit
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The boss, ever vigilant, is liveblogging the abortion known as the Senate Iraq sleepover for as long as she can stand it. I got my fill from Politico a few hours ago: buzzwords, grandstanding, grassroots garbage, all in the service of a foreordained 52-47 or 53-46 filibustered vote on cloture. If you missed it in March, I commend to you Bill Ardolino’s final post about his time as an embed in Fallujah, particularly the section “Politics & Why Some Fight.” My appetite for debate on this subject is where his was then; if not for my obligation to MM, I’d never write about it again. Here’s hoping that 24% approval rating cuts in half. God damn them.

By way of illustration, here’s a Democrat who’s willing to waste everyone’s time with a Senate stunt that won’t affect anything and a Republican who doesn’t have an answer and isn’t fooling anyone either.

Update: They know it’s coming and they know what it means.

[Iraqi ambassador Samir Sumaidaie] said Iraqi leaders were engaged in a desperate juggling act. “They are juggling so many balls, and they know they have been handed even more balls,” he said. “And suddenly, one of the hands will have to go.”…

Though conceding a lack of progress, Sumaidaie said the Iraqi government wanted the troop buildup to continue “until we see real fruit.”

“The tragedy will be that after four years of learning and making mistakes, just when we started to get to grips with the situation, just when both the Americans and the Iraqis have begun to understand the dynamics … and get some of the answers, that the rug would be pulled out,” he said.

Another Iraqi official commented on what Maliki said this weekend about U.S. troops being free to leave and on the prospects of the Baker-Hamilton solution:

A senior Iraqi official said in an interview Tuesday that Maliki’s comments reflected “partly pride, partly it’s trying to resist [U.S.] pressure.”

But the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said “everybody knows our security forces are not strong enough and there would be a lot of bloodletting. But he wasn’t going to say that.”…

The official rejected as “fuzzy thinking” proposals to shrink U.S. forces and limit their mission to training Iraqis, searching for militants and supporting the Iraqi military.

“If you’re just fighting for your survival you might as well go home,” he said.

Meanwhile, on the Hill, they’re jerking around.

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