“We’re on the verge of chaos, and the current plan is not working,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an Associated Press interview. U.S. and Iraqi officials should be held accountable for the lack of progress, said Graham, a Republican who is a frequent critic of the administration’s policies.
[…] Facing growing impatience with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s failure to stem the carnage, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said international forces must not abandon Iraq while the situation there remains volatile.
“I do believe there is no option for the international community to cut and run,” he told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair in London. He said Iraqis and the international community need to be realistic, “but not defeatist.”
“We need to understand that there is a need of utmost urgency to deal with many of the problems of Iraq but we must not give in to panic,” he said.
Let’s be clear who is panicking here. If the US pulls out of Iraq, most would view it as, at long last, recognizing reality and cutting our losses. But for Barham Saleh and other members of Maliki’s government the stakes are entirely different. For those who participated in or materially aided the US occupation, when the Americans go their lives will be worth a half-soy latte at Starbucks. Panic is not too strong a word for those who don’t already have a place reserved on the last helicopter to leave the Green Zone.