Milestones don’t always mark what they should. Tomorrow all these things are true: there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; procedures and circumstances and
“Out, America out!” a group of sweat-drenched young men chanted Monday at a Baghdad park as the sun was setting. They jumped up and down to the deafening beat of drums and the wail of horns.
It’s a “carnival” in Baghdad, according to The Post’s Ernesto Londono, filled with Iraqi troops grinning as they take their lives into their own hands and graffiti writers further south demanding, “Pull your troops from our Basra, we are its sons and want its sovereignty.” Don’t tell them today is just another day.
Building on the political opportunityafforded by today’s national celebration, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared victory, reports The New York Times:
“„
“The national united government succeeded in putting down the sectarian war that was threatening the unity and the sovereignty of Iraq.”
Adds reporter Alissa Rubin, “He made no mention of the American military’s involvement in fighting here for the last six years.” If you were Maliki, would you? Rubin also notes that the government turned American reporters away from the Green Zone — the former U.S. enclavenow under Iraqi control— in an apparent gesture “to signal that the Iraqi authorities were in charge.”