Iraq

(WaPo) Three US soldiers killed in multiple IED attacks.

(AP) Rockets fall in the Green Zone killing 4 Filipino contractors.

(VOI) 30 bodies dumped in Baghdad. (That number is creeping back up.)

(Reuters) Scott Bowen, the former Bush appointed special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction is now under investigation for allegedly not showing up at work and making employees work on his book rather than their jobs.

(NYTimes) The current version of the oil law appears dead. (This has been the White House's top "benchmark" priority over the past year.)

(UPI) Even the guy who wrote the oil law now stands against it.

And, I'm not too optimistic about what might come out of this regional Iraq summit at Sharm al Sheik. The US is pushing this idea of an International Compact with Iraq.

The short version is that foreign countries commit to significant aid and debt reduction on the promise that Iraq will have political unity in five years. (Cooperation on ending violence is unclear.) The Sunni countries, Iraq's biggest lender nations, are balking at the prospect of giving Maliki's sectarian Shia government any assistance based on his current sectarian performace.

Perhaps most tellingly, the administration is trying to lower expectations to the point that a meeting where nothing happens is a success.

“The political significance of having 60 countries there, in what I think will be the first international agreement between Iraq and the world community in decades — our research certainly hasn’t found one since the 1950s — I think itself is a moment of political significance quite apart from whatever economic/financial result it might entail,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt told reporters on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s plane en route to Egypt.

Some joint statement is expected.

(Editorial Note: Our entire Iraq strategy now hinges upon Condi Rice's diplomatic success, and her track record doesn't support much optimism.)