See for yourself:
So, the second of eighteen benchmarks is away.Iraq's parliament on Wednesday passed three key pieces of legislation that set a date for provincial elections, allot $48 billion for 2008 spending, and provide limited amnesty to detainees in Iraqi custody.
The three measures were bundled together for one vote to satisfy the demands of minority Kurds who feared they might be double-crossed on their stand that the budget allot 17 percent to their semiautonomous regional government in the north.
The vote came a day after the Sunni speaker of the fragmented parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, threatened to disband the legislature, saying it was so riddled with distrust it appeared unable to adopt legislation.
There are two points that strike me here. First, listen to the Iraqi lawmakers; they don't sound like feuding warlords, but like American lawmakers trying to represent their constituents, drawing lines, but coming to compromises that everyone can find acceptable. Even the Sadrist parliamentarians, a little more than ten percent of MPs, although they walked out for the debate for the Kurdish funding, came back for the second debate and the vote. No calls for blood and violence.
Second, when you consider the history of the region and the hatreds that exist between all three groups, this sort of progress is incredible. Two major benchmarks passed in a period of only a few months! And the progress is even more remarkable at the local level, as Sunni and Shi'a coexist peacefully--for the most part--as neighbors and even welcome back Christian refugees from earlier in the war by helping to rebuild and clean up their churches. Iraq is already a more tolerant nation than almost any surrounding it.
Yahoo! News puts as gloomy a spin on the story as it can, but this can only be seen as remarkable progress for the surge, our troops, and the President's plan to fight global jihadism.
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