Our troops in Iraq should also get a vacation. As long as the Iraqi parliament is on vacation our troops shouldn't patrol the streets or the neighborhoods. They should just provide security for their own bases and for roads leading to them.

If the future of Iraq is not important enough for their parliament to stay in session, our troops shouldn't be dying for them.

Granted. And by the same logic, so should the American Congress stay at work, so should the President, the VP, the Directors of Homeland Security, CIA et al. But they are taking a break aren't they? Your call for the Iraqi Parliament not to take a break is inconsistent at best, hypocritical at worst.

I need a break from everyone blaming the Iraqi government for the U.S governments failures.

Nouri Maliki didn't keep his parliament running because they would have passed resolutions calling for the US to leave Iraq.

THe post did not specifically address the vacations in Washington, but you are right - Our record-setting-vaction-taking president should sit his ass down, and the asses of his entire staff, and figure out what should be done.

Or even married? Sometimes people or groups need to get some space, some perspective. They may come back ready to get something done.

Cut the crap and stop with this blame the Iraq strawman -- please!

Yes, and our own congress should kept in session until gang violence in our major urban areas has been "solved" ... or until both houses can agree on anything of substance.

What goes on in the Iraqi parliament and street violence are miles apart... don't even get me started about how illegitimate and unrepresentative that parliament is or how the legislation in question has been under discussion for months and months with no progress because ... the parliament really resents having US - the united state - ramming it down their throats, not to mention that to give-in to our demands weakened their credibility ...

but, you already knew all that, didn't you?

The Kurdish fellow is likely correct: there is nothing to work on because Maliki's government is coming apart at the seams. And susan sunflower is right, because the Iraqis are arguing about NOT passing the oil sharing law due to the US govt's insistence on foreign (US Multi-nationals) contracts. Cheny told them to sit down and shut up and "git 'er done."

The Summer 2007 Nieman Reports has an excellent article by Richard Engel describnig exactly what IS going on with Iraqi government and the sectarian fighting.

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/07-2NRsummer/p14-0702-engel.html

They won't resolve their issues until they kick the US out and take care of their own sovereignity.

Its 102 degrees in Baghdad right now! YOU try bringing together warring sectarian groups together in that kind of heat! Its hard work!

Given the lack of representation and the lack of actual commitment to democracy; I think both sets of quotes are warranted. I have to agree with those who've called for them to stay in session. Even if they were sitting discussing future state agronomy needs or a ten year plan on dredging projects for the Tigris; we'd have a sense that there is some kind of vision thing going on there...as it appears now they don't care. Why should we? Did the insurgents go on vacation too?

Even giving the massive disconnect between Congress and what Americans actually want, it's hard to imagine them taking a month off if we were in the middle of an insurgency or a civil war.

End this farce now.

So let's pull our troops out for a month. We'll save $3 million an hour times the 744 hours in a month. It's a win-win situation.

The Iraqi government must have learned to take August off from George W. Bush.

That's right, didn't he ignore the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" memo when he was clearing brush in Texas?

Yeah, I test drove one last week. It gets great gas mileage, but there's no headroom, legroom, or cargo space. Besides, I just hated that name. What were they going for, something like negro nation, or something? It really put me off, so I got a big yellow Hummer instead.

... and another comment section gets ruined before it even has a chance to start.

Oh well, serious topic, totally un-serious hack poster. What can you do?

After all, we only threw their nation into bloody civil war. Glad to see all of these posters giving Tim Grieve shit.

Tim, there are two neocon talking points -- one for each party. Repubs: "we can't afford to lose and victory is around the corner." Dems: "if Iraqis don't step up and democratically decide to give our corporations their oil*, we'll pull reconstruction aid and just redeploy to our bases around and inside your nation to protect our - er - your oil."

* The whole push for the congress to "do something," for those paying attention, is to pass the "hydrocarbon" bill -- which privatizes the oil. It has nothing to do with our troops, whose lives matter to politicians marginally more than Iraqi lives (except when it comes to media soundbytes).

A little late on the uptake today...so I have to backtrack:

Tim said: "I'll try to remember the lesson of the past three weeks: In a world of forests and trees, we spend a lot of time here studying individual twigs and leaves. But when Election Day 2008 rolls around, the folks who have only a vague sense that there's something green over there -- the 41 percent who still think that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11, or the 11 percent who think we've actually caught ol' bin Loggin' -- get a vote that counts just as much as anyone else's. That explains a lot about how we find ourselves where we do now, and I hope it will inform the work I will be doing from Washington."

I say: Welcome back. Others did a good job...but you always take it succinctly to the mat. And a day without Tim, is a day without a good infusion of the good, the bad and the ugly in the halls of power. How you did such a great job from Sacramento, I will never know. However...you're in D.C. now, the bar is raised. You're going to have to outdo yourself.

Thanks for letting us know that you don't just report the facts, you fear them as much as the rest of us.

No, I'm not a sycophantic kiss-up. I just think people should be appreciated once in a while.