To the untrained eye, it may look alarmist -- but it is an alarming development from the perspective of national security and the US economy.
Last week, Vice-President Cheney traveled to Iraq for the SOLE purpose of forcing the Iraqi Patliament to sign the oil revenue sharing bill that the Parliament announced days earlier was drafted.
Trust me when I tell you that Cheney was not there for a photo op or to sabre rattle with Iran. Those of us in the global economy business are balancing on a knife edge waiting for this to come down. The stakes are high.
If the bill doesn't get signed before June -- the Iraqi parliament will probably disintegrate, oil prices could slam America like nothing we've ever seen before, the US might be forced to pull troops out of Iraq, and our national security could be compromised.
Admittedly -- none of this gets into the news (except high-level financial news) -- but a few creative souls around here like to "think" about things rather than "react" to them. It's the classical conservative approach.
It would be nice to have you in the game.
I have been following developments in Iraq like a hawk since day one. I do not share your pessimism. The fact that Kurds today, or Sunni’s yesterday, or Shia last month threaten to leave the gov’t does not concern me. It is how things work in a parliamentary system. It is how they jostle for power.