Fake: The 'outrage' over the botched joke.



The only good things that will come from this sand fight is that it will keep the jabber up on Iraq and off the Republican platform of... well I don't know what it is, but it's anything that isn't Iraq... It will lessen the chances in '08 of a Kerry ticket. Sorry Republicans.

Real: The solider we just abandoned in Baghdad.

American soldiers rolled up their barbed-wire barricades and lifted a near siege of the largest Shiite Muslim enclave in Baghdad on Tuesday, heeding the orders of a Shiite-led Iraqi government whose assertion of sovereignty had Shiites celebrating in the streets.
...
The move lifted a near siege that had stood at least since last Wednesday. U.S. military police imposed the blockade after the kidnapping of an American soldier of Iraqi descent. The soldier's Iraqi in-laws said they believed he had been abducted by the Mahdi Army as he visited his wife at her home in the Karrada area of Baghdad, where U.S. military checkpoints were also removed as a result of Maliki's action.

Well, no one can say that the "Unity Government" is a Washington puppet anymore, more of a puppet of Sadr and/or Twelver Islam.

Pat Lang calls this a 'watershed' event.