Political Progress!

The Iraqi legislature apparently has reached an agreement allowing the dreaded Baathists back into the Iraqi government. The media is trumpeting this as a very big step towards reconciliation. But Juan Cole has a question:

If the new law was good for ex-Baathists, then the ex-Baathists in parliament will have voted for it and praised it, right? And likely the Sadrists (hard line anti-Baath Shiites) and Kurds would be a little upset.

Instead, parliament's version of this law was spearheaded by Sadrists, and the ex-Baathists in parliament criticized it.

Somehow that little drawback suggests to me that the law is not actually, as written, likely to be good for sectarian reconciliation.

Good question.

Go read Juan for the details. In a nutshell, it turns out that the details of the legislation specifically require ex-Baathist to be prosecuted (if they committed crimes) or retire (if they did not commit crimes) and prevents them from holding sensitive ministry position. In fact, the law was sponsored by Sadrists who hate Sunni's.

But don't expect the American media to look at the issue any deeper than whatever they're told by the administration. Afterall, they've got deep cover work to do on Jamie Lynn Spears and dead white girls.