Iraq

The eyegrabbing headline this morning is that Maliki's cabinet has approved an oil draft law to be passed on to the legislative committee.

Before you get too excited, keep in mind that this version of the law has been stripped of alot of the key elements in order to get something passed, and that this was "passed unanimously" while both the Sadr and Sunni cabinet members were boycotting Maliki's government.

In other words, Maliki, the SIIC, and the Kurds did the Bush administration a favor pushing through a fairly empty law to allow crowing about "benchmarks." With Sadr and the Sunnis missing, this is not a step towards reconciliation.

(Reuters) Meanwhile, Sunni leader and Vice President Hashemi spoke very frankly about abandoning the political process for violence.

"I will not talk about this matter because the time for talking has ended. I will let our actions do the talking for us," he said. "We started by suspending our participation in cabinet and if there is no real response from our partners in this government over our suggestions and reservations, we as the Accordance Front will take (other) measures."

Let's remember that the goal of "benchmarks" is reconciliation, not scorekeeping in US politics. If bad measures are forced through in an effort to defeat "the Washington clock," we will leave Iraq even worse off.