The Blog of War

(Wow, allow me to look in self-regard at that title... if I ever change the name of this blog, it'd be to that... damn, someone beat me to it!)

So here's some one-stop shopping on our adventures abroad. First of all, remember the Coalition of the Willing? It's slowly becoming the Coalition of the One:

Britain plans to pull out nearly all its soldiers from Iraq by the summer of 2008, with the first withdrawals within weeks, a top military commander said in an interview published on Tuesday.

Lieutenant General Nick Houghton, Britain's most senior officer in Iraq, outlined a phased two-year withdrawal plan in an interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

"There is a fine line between staying too long and leaving too soon," he was quoted as saying. "A military transition over two years has a reasonable chance of avoiding the pitfalls of overstaying our welcome but gives us the best opportunity of consolidating the Iraqi security forces."

Houghton went on to say that it's conditional, based on the forming of a unity government and a stabilizing of sectarian strife. So I guess that means they'll be there forever:

The president of Iraq and the country's leading coalition of Sunni Arab parties added their voices Saturday to a growing chorus of top politicians and political parties urging the ruling alliance of Shiite parties to reconsider its nominee for prime minister in favor of someone who would attract broader support.

The Shiite coalition, known as the United Iraqi Alliance, "has the right of nominating, not the right of appointing" the prime minister, President Jalal Talabani said at a news conference.

Talabani, a Kurd, stopped short of opposing the Shiites' candidate, Ibrahim al-Jafari, who has served for nearly a year as interim prime minister. Jafari was nominated almost three weeks ago by the alliance to continue in his post in the next government. But Talabani made clear that he favored someone different, saying: "We want a national unity government, which means not imposing someone. . . . This does not mean intervention in their affairs, but it is a suggestion."

IMO, there's no way the Shiites will back down here because they don't need to and see the prime minister question as already decided. This will only further strain the sectarian forces working to pull the country apart, as the violence continues. Iraq had various strongmen in power for 300-odd years for a reason; it was how this poorly devised country could hope to stay together.

Meanwhile, that talk about the Iraqi Parliament convening on Sunday? Um, maybe not:

Iraq's parliament is unlikely to open on Sunday as Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi -- a Shiite -- had not yet signed the presidential council order to convene the new assembly, a top government official said Tuesday.

"All three members of the presidential council have to sign the order announcing the start of the parliament and Mr. Mahdi has not yet signed for reasons best known to him," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Due to this there is a possibility that the parliament may not convene on March 12 as there is also a strong demand from the Shiite leaders to postpone it," the official said.

The presidential council consists of President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, Mahdi and Vice President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni.

The political deadlock springs from a dispute over the forming of the next coalition government after the Kurds, Sunnis and some secular groups called on the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance to chose another candidate to lead the cabinet rather than outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

"I'll be summoning today the leaders of parliamentary factions to inform them of the inaugural meeting of parliament to be held on March 12," Talabani said Monday after meeting the new premier of the northern Kurdish region Nichirvan Barzani.

But sources close to him say that a number of Shiite leaders met him later in the evening asking to postpone the start of the assembly until the dispute over Jaafari is resolved.

By the way our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs thinks Iraq is "going very well" while the top commander of the Iraqi army thinks... oh wait he was killed in an ambush.

Of course, this is all about the LAST war! Don't you want to know about the next one?

The good news is, we won't have to change many letters on the network graphics:

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. The warning came ahead of a meeting today of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will forward a report on Iran's nuclear activities to the UN security council.

Yesterday Mr Bolton reiterated his hardline stance. In a speech to the annual convention of the American-Israel public affairs committee, the leading pro-Israel US lobbyists, he said: "The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve ... we must be prepared to rely on comprehensive solutions and use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."

This comes on the heels of Condi Rice not even definitively saying there ought to be SANCTIONS, so there's a good cop/bad cop thing going on here. The saber rattling seems bold considering that the framework of a deal has been reached whereby Russia would enrich uranium for Iran to use for civil energy purposes. The IAEA will certainly press this in the coming week.

Meanwhile the seeming hypocrisy of giving a deal to India for their nuclear program, by saying that they'll only use it for civilian energy looms large. Even more so considering our "ally" Pakistan was denied:

PRESIDENT George Bush has made it clear that Pakistan should not expect a civilian nuclear agreement like the one with India soon. At the same time, he has bluntly told the subcontinent rivals that they cannot be compared to each other.

Visiting Pakistan, Mr Bush said he and President Pervez Musharraf had discussed a civilian nuclear program for Pakistan during talks on Saturday.

"I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories," Mr Bush said at a news conference with General Musharraf. "Our strategy will take in … those well-known differences."

For an Administration so worried about the Dubai Ports World deal based on how rejecting them will make us look to the Muslim world, how do you think THIS sits with them?

That's it for The Blog of War this week, folks! (wow, I may have my first copyrighted feature)