I suppose, as I suffer through the project “upper 90s” here in Denver that I ought to have sympathy for the Iraqi Parliament, which is heading toward its August recess.
While one would think that the US government (the congress of which largely goes back home during the summer, too) would be pressuring the Iraqis to stick to their critical work and milestone-striving and all of that — especially with that magical September deadline round of reports fast approaching for everyone to once again rehash whether it would be less of a disaster for us to stay in Iraq or to leave — the White House is being very compassionate about the whole thing, at least so far as the Iraqi government goes..
Q Is the Iraqi government and the Iraqi parliament taking the month of August off?
MR. SNOW: Probably, yes. Just not —
Q They’re taking the entire month of August off, before the September deadline?
MR. SNOW: It looks like they may, yes. Just like the U.S. Congress is.
Q Have you tried to talk them out of that?
MR. SNOW: You know, it’s 130 degrees in Baghdad in August, I’ll pass on your recommendation.
Shortly thereafter, with questioning, Snow realized that there were a few other people in Baghdad who weren’t getting the month off just because of the heat.
Q Well, Tony, Tony, I’m sorry, that’s — you know — I mean, there are a lot of things that happen by September and it’s 130 degrees for the U.S. military also on the ground —
MR. SNOW: You know, that’s a good point. And it’s 130 degrees for the Iraqi military.
(via DOF)
This is of course (not noted) that they had planned to take their normal 2 month (July and August) break but we bullied them into only taking a 1 month break so that the could pass the oil sharing oil plundering agreement.
I had been going to mention that the summer break has been talked about for some time.