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Saturday, September 08, 2007

Beat the Clock

It is often said that we need to beat a faster Washington clock with a slower-running Baghdad clock.

The last Sunni faction in Iraq's parliament returned to their seats:

A small Sunni Arab bloc ended its parliamentary boycott Saturday, returning to the legislature as it considers key benchmark legislation demanded by Washington amid increasing pressure to end the political deadlock.

The return of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue ends the last boycott of parliament, which had contributed to the political paralysis.


Various legislation that the GAO report on benchmark progress will be considered by the full body soon. Progress was being made behind the scenes, where all progress is made in the legislative branch whether we are talking Iraq's parliament or our own Congress. So our Congressional leaders complaining about the lack of progress is pretty dishonest in my opinion. they know better.

The only question is whether the Iraqi parliament shows up our Congress by making progress on these benchmarks while the Petraeus and Crocker reports are discussed.

If these benchmarks are thus met, what does Congress say? Do they say they don't count as progress because they came in after the GAO report? I wouldn't be surprised.

We are winning this war. And saying that we are winning too slowly compared to the Washington clock mistakenly assumes that the clock-holders in Congress want to win.

We still need to beat the clock, of course. Just not the way its been described.