Iraqi parliament adjourned, from July 30th to September 4th...while US soldiers die

[Thorgrim]

BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament adjourned Monday for an August recess without receiving from the government a series of U.S.-backed draft laws designed to enhance national unity.

Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the three hour session without a quorum present and declared it would not resume work until Sept. 4.

Iraq lawmakers take summer break - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com


There is no way they will be able to push threw sweeping legislation in the 10 days before Gen Petreaus's report, so, now, where stand, the Iraqi government in the surge has been a complete failure

Since the surge was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to give breathing room to the Iraqi parliament so it could pass laws, we can say that on Sept 15th, the surge will have been a failure

There are no needs to point to the small signs of progress, the sunni's being greedy and forming up their tribal bands to get blackmarket AND US money in exchange for attacking al-qaeda happened before, not because of, the surge...and as mentioned in other posts, it's caused the Shias to go up and arms as our Sunni allies have declared they will attack Shias as soon as they route al qaeda

Overall sectarian violence has gone up and down, but is still at ridiculously high levels it was roughly before the surge but after the '06 spike, so that's a failure

Even though July looks to be the safest month for US forces of the surge, it's still almost DOUBLE as deadly as last year (As of now, 80 coalition deaths this month, 2006, during one of the heights of the sectarian violence, had only 46 coalition deaths)

Futhermore, it's already known that since the '06 spike in sectarian deaths being reported by morgues and local cities, the iraqi government censors deaths, and releases its own figure...which ofcourse are under the direct control of Maliki who wants everyone to think sectarian violence is low...so the already high numbers...are actually already being censored, who knows what the old reports would tell us the violence is at...

On all fronts, a failure

[WickedLou9]

I think that it's shameful. But then again, our congress takes a summer break too, and our troops are dying every day and there is important work to be done here in the US as well.

[motivez]

Since it's something that's happened today and the other thread has been inactive for over a week we're not gonna merge

Please keep it on topic. This post will self destruct at some point.

[thomez]

How can Petreaus give an accurate report on the success of the surge in securing Baghdad when for the final month before he gives his report their Congress will not even be in session?

Pathetic.