--- In [email protected], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > In a message dated 7/31/07 2:04:52 P.M. Central Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > > point of the surge was to give the Iraqi government > breathing room to make some political progress. > > Parliament has just adjourned for the month of August, > having accomplished ZILCH. > > That was in the news, MDixon. I guess you must have > missed it. > > Nope didn't miss a thing. No political compromises yet > but 60 pieces of legislation passed. Killings, executions > and bombings are down. Sunnis are turning on Al Qaeda and > working with Coalition forces for a change.
Scrape harder: Iraq's Parliament headed into a monthlong summer recess on Monday, halting work despite calls from the United States and the prime minister for lawmakers to shorten their break to push through important legislation. The decision to take off the month of August almost surely eliminates hopes that the 275-member Council of Representatives will pass laws sought by American officials as evidence that the country is making progress toward stability.... Their scheduled return is less than two weeks before Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, are to submit a report on benchmarks set by Congress to measure Iraq's political progress. There is widespread pessimism that feuding politicians will thrash out such complex issues before the report to Congress, which is considered crucial to maintaining support for the war.... But political analysts said two of the most crucial pieces of legislation relevant to Congressional benchmarks the proposed oil law and the one on former Baathists have not even been sent to Parliament for debate, because of a deadlock within the ruling coalition's main parties. Shatha al-Mussawi, a lawmaker from the Shiite-led coalition, said there was no reason for Parliament to remain in session because it has nothing to vote on.... http://tinyurl.com/37q4uw Poverty, hunger and public health continue to worsen in Iraq, according to a report released Monday by Oxfam International, which says that more aid is needed from abroad and calls on the Iraqi government to decentralize the distribution of food and medical supplies. The report, based on a compendium of research from the United Nations, the Iraqi government and nonprofit organizations Oxfam works with or finances, offers little original data. But it provides one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of the human crisis within Iraq and what it describes as a slow-motion response from Iraq's government, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union. The report states that roughly four million Iraqis, many of them children, are in dire need of food aid; that 70 percent of the country lacks access to adequate water supplies, up from 50 percent in 2003; and that 90 percent of the country's hospitals lack basic medical and surgical supplies. One survey cited in the report, completed in May by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, found that 43 percent of Iraqis live in "absolute poverty," earning less than $1 a day. Unemployment and hunger are particularly acute among the estimated two million people displaced internally from their homes by violence, many of whom are jobless, homeless and largely left on their own.... http://tinyurl.com/34jcgg > The Democrats have a lot invested in the failure of the > surge. If it works they look very bad. You really are despicable.
