Premature Iraqulation

Title totally stolen from Monday night pub quiz team name. (Others of note: Mary Kate Doesn't Swallow; US Pulls Out, Iraq Still Getting Fucked; Woke Up This Morning With a Terrible Handover. I tried to suggest Borg Chick Not Down With Collective Action, but I was overruled and we went with Cheney Needs a Good Leahy. OK—I'll spare you more capital letters and disgusting Washington insiderism. Here I've seen a team name pun off steel tariffs, and worse, get laughs.)

Probably better not to throw a Super Bowl-sized going away party for the transition of authority, because it makes a Super Bowl-sized target, so the surprise departure was a good idea. Maybe the CPA did catch wind of a disastrous attack, in which case I hope they're also going to try to prevent it, but hanging around to see if it happens isn't smart. (Do insurgents cancel?) And it could just be the Bush administration being gamey; remember Preznit No Give Me Turkee surprise Thanksgiving—this is Bush's bread n' butter play.

But if some see this move as fleeing, I'm not going to argue with that. The choice to leave early seems to have been made in anticipation of some bad shit. Laura Secor says in The American Prospect (print) that Baghdad's murder rate is nearly double that of DC—not bad given the lack of any real police force, but still frightening, and that's just the normal gamut of violent homicides. The day before the handover, insurgents killed 100 Iraqis, and martial law looms. It's just not a nice place—better in some sense than it was under Saddam, though.

Anyway, welcome to the neighborhood, Iraq. We suggest getting cable TV as soon as possible—people just love that Tony Soprano. Drop by the UN barbecue this weekend, and here's Nato's number if anything happens.