USA and Iraq: "you first"

It seems to boil down to a game of chicken.

On the one hand, the Bush administration keeps begging the Iraqi government to forge compromises between political factions and finally, after five long years, get down to the business of forming a Nation. On the home front, the Bushies are playing the delaying game. At first the surge would last six months. Now it looks more like a year, as the word is out that there will be a delay in ending the surge. Look for some soldiers to come home in July, maybe. So it's "get off your asses, then we will leave" instead of "We are leaving, so get off your asses". Is it not obvious that this message will never penetrate because it implicitly contains an escape clause for the Iraqis and because the Shiite government does not want us to leave?

The Iraqi government, by the same token, is begging for more time from Uncle Sam. As the Iraq war entered its sixth year, the country's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie,  urged Americans to be patient, contending that the war is "well worth fighting". "This is global terrorism hitting everywhere, and they have chosen Iraq to be a battlefield. And we have to take them on,"  al-Rubaie continued  Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." Oh please, what the hell do you care about global terror, you just want to take the easy road and keep us there to do the heavy lifting.

Meanwhile, the co-dependent crew in Iraq have apparently decided that there is another reason to avoid tough choices in their government: there is some chance that the next President of the USA could be McCain, who has said publicly that he is in no hurry to leave. Yeay, they could lean on us for another several years and several hundred billion bucks more if it works out!!