News today from Iraq

The big news was supposed to be that Vice-President Dick Cheney snuck into Iraq for a surprise visit, and indeed, that was startling when I heard the radio report in my car…until I heard the sound bite that Cheney asked the Iraqi parliament to reconsider taking vacation at this time because of the work at hand.

What?!…… The Iraqi parliament was considering taking a vacation?!

Baghdad/Washington – US officials Wednesday severely criticized plans by the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month summer recess while US troops were trying to secure the country to enable the government to seek political reconciliation among warring parties.

Reality check….How can this be? 

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told US Congress that a ‘variety’ of US officials ‘have made clear to the Iraqis that it would be a very bad idea for the Council of Representatives to take a recess in July and August.’

‘I told some of the Iraqis with whom I met that we are buying them time for political reconciliation, and that every day we buy them, we buy it with American blood,’ Gates said.

Good point to make, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for making it for the troops and their families.

‘For this group to go out for two months, it would, in my opinion, be unacceptable,’ he said.

Iraqi parliament thinking of vacation? Just after I heard this, I read this.

Christians are fleeing in droves from the southern Baghdad district of Dora after Sunni insurgents told them they would be killed unless they converted to Islam or left, according to Christian leaders and families who fled.

Similar episodes of what has become known as sectarian cleansing raged through Baghdad neighborhoods last year as Sunnis drove Shiites from Sunni areas and Shiites drove Sunnis from Shiite ones, but this marks the first apparent attempt to empty an entire Baghdad neighborhood of Christians, the Christians say.

The exodus began three weeks ago after a fatwa, or religious edict, was issued by Sunni insurgents offering Christians a stark choice: to convert to Islam and pay an ancient Islamic tax known as jizyah, or to depart within 24 hours and leave their property behind. If they did neither, they said, they faced death.

The very notion that the Iraqi parliament is even considering taking a vacation during this war, with its horrific violence happening randomly and now this cleansing of Christians, is…jarring. One of the major problems in this war is that we do not really know our enemy. But one has to wonder how well we know our friends.