Sooooo….. Georgie plans a summit with al Maliki in Jordan, Moqtada al-Sadr tells Maliki if he goes to the summit he’ll pull his faction out of the Iraqi parliment, al Maliki goes to the summit so Sadr institutes the protest, the White House leaks a memo (remember, leaking is ok when they leak it) that says Maliki is useless. Maliki gives the Prez the ole fuck you by not showing up for dinner, the Saudis tell us if we quit Iraq they’re going to step in to defend the Sunni faction, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a letter to the American people telling us to withdraw from Iraq and that the newly elected Democrats would be held to account by the people and by history (oh I like that part), Lee Hamilton states the Iraq Study Group has reached a consensus and will release their conclusions on December 6th (oh goodie), Georgie says there’s nothing unusual about al Maliki’s no show because it was never planned to be a trilateral meeting, but a bilateral meeting. Oh, and troops (about 30,000) are being drawn from Anbar, where the violence is out of control, and sent to Baghdad, but they’re not saying that’s where they’re coming from yet. Oh, and least I forget, Colin Powell….you know, the guy who’s instrumental in getting us into Iraq, claims Georgie is wrong…..there is a civil war going on. Gee thanks for clearing that up Colin!
And that about sums up the Middle East developments for the day….. things are going swimmingly, don’t you think?