We were just talking of this

First of all, the Iraqis should be making the decisions about their country, not some grey haired study group in D.C. or the Boy King. In any case there were two conferences in the last few days to address the future of Iraq. One should take this as an admission of defeat by the Bush Administration. One was in Baghdad :

Iraq's al-Maliki presses reconciliation By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's army has "opened its doors" to all former members of Saddam Hussein's army, the prime minister said Saturday at a national reconciliation conference boycotted by one of his main Shiite allies, a major Sunni group and Iraq's exiled opposition.
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The radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, one of al-Maliki's key political backers — refused to attend the meeting, as did a major Sunni group and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. (emphasis added)

Now why would al-Sadr boycott a conference sponsored by his bestest ally? Well:

......The story is about Muqtada al-Sadr supporting the "Iraqi People’s Support Conference" in Istanbul. This was the Sunni conference held in Istanbul yesterday and the day before. Muqtada al-Sadr has issued a statement supporting it. He said that it "supports our brothers [the Ahl ul-Sunna, the Sunni people - Ali]," and that his entire concern was for the success of meetings such as this of people whose aim is:

"to extricate themselves from the grasp of the occupation and of the Baathists"

He went on to say:

"I will not accept the intervention of any country in the affairs of Iraq, and will continue to reject the occupation."

The point of all this is that we don't understand the least about Iraq. al-Sadr is a Shiite! We all thought that there was such bitter emnity between Shiite and Sunni that never the twain would meet. Now he's supporting a Sunni conference in Istanbul and spurning conference in Baghdad sponsored by the Shiite Prime Minister.

How stupid we have been.