Flag-Waving

Via Spencer Ackerman, Leila Fadel and Hussein Kadhim report for McClatchy on the state of political reconciliation in Iraq:

"The new flag is done for a foreign agenda and we won't raise it," said Ali Hatem al Suleiman, a leading member of the U.S.-backed Anbar Awakening Council, "If they want to force us to raise it, we will leave the yard for them to fight al Qaida." [...]

A slim minority of parliamentarians approved the new flag, which doesn't have Saddam Hussein's handwriting or the three stars that represented his Sunni-dominated Baath Party.

The good news is that I assume our new friends aren't literally going to turn around tomorrow and fight alongside al-Qaeda over this flag issue. Still, if you're looking for a clearer indication that the "Awakening"/CLC movement is not going to be the basis of national unity in Iraq I don't think you need to look much further than this.

Comments

Aesthetically, I like it. Its a big improvement over the flag we tried to foist on them earlier.

Posted by Ed | January 26, 2008 6:45 PM

Yeah, but it would have been so cool force Arabs to live under a flag with Israeli colors.

Oh well.

Posted by Jim W | January 26, 2008 6:59 PM

It seems like the situation in Iraq may have deteriorated almost to the South Carolina level.

Posted by y81 | January 26, 2008 8:31 PM

cool flag!

I still go get what creating a new Shiite state next to Iran is going to buy us. And weren't they supposed to pay for the war thing with oil money? This whole war for hire thing that the "clever" neo-cons came up with ain't working out--is it?

Posted by poetryman69 | January 27, 2008 6:15 AM