Ah, isn't that nice, the UN has unanimously given the USA 18 months to get the hell out of Iraq according to the Resolution adopted yesterday.  Fortunately for the glad-handing delegates at the Security Council, neither the Kurds nor the Shiites have a vote on the sovereignty situation.

This is the third plan for a return to normalcy in Iraq (as if anything there has been normal since Hamurabi) and to Colin Powell and Ambassador Negroponte's credit they got France to sign off on the deal.  For those that only read headlines (like POTUS and most of the world's population) this seems like a welcome development.  What veteran Sandinista fighter Negroponte won't be bragging about is the implicit rejection of the "fully sovereign" Government and the Interim Constitution by the Shiites which, upon the insistence of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was not mentioned in the UN Resolution. 

Nor will Negroponte be mentioning that in one day, he and Ambassador Bremer managed to alienate half the Shiites and all the Kurds in the country.  The minority Kurds desparately wanted international legitimacy for the Interim Constitution which is the only thing which secures their hard fought existence.  They were screwed once again by the UN and the USA.  The text of the Kurd leader's letter to President Bush is posted by Juan Cole juxtaposed against Sistani's rant against the entire godless, US-appointed system. 

According to the Guardian the mostly young and unemployed followers of Moqtada al-Sadr have been effectively eliminated from any legitimate participation in the government. At first blush, getting nine Iraq militia groups to lay down their arm seems an amazing accomplishment.  Co-opting them and giving them jobs in the "official" security system seems more than reasonable.  It would be if the militias you were talking about were the ones giving us all the trouble. 

The largest and most violent militia was al-Sadr's and they will not be allowed to participate in the government in an official capacity for at least three years.  What choice will these outlaw have but to continue to be outlaws?  Nice plan. 

For the Kurds, who certainly deserve some consideration for their steadfast resistence to Saddam for so many years, and for the fact that they lost more soldiers than any other US ally in the war, the deal is a disaster waiting to happen.  I wouldn't be surprised if the Kurds walk away. 

We cave to Sistani at every opportunity, bowing to the fact that he could call for a popular uprising that could completely shut them down and us out.  That's realpolitik in action.  If you ask me, failing to gain the blessing of very people the this supposedly sovereign government is to serve is a bigger deal than getting recognition by China or Germany.  There isn't too much internal support for the current plan.

This deal has only the blessing of the walking targets who were just appointed to the Interim Government and presumably the Sunnis, the newly repatriated Ba'athist in the Government, as well as the still expatriated Ba'athist terrorist in consort with al Queada operatives flocking to the country who are enjoying the circus and have gone unchecked in their continued destruction and indiscriminate bombings.

I do find a bit of either injustice or simple irony in that former Ba'athist are enjoying prominent positions in the Iraqi military and have been welcomed into various ministries, but the very people so long oppressed by Saddam's regime, angry young Shiites, have been disenfranchised.