Iraqi Government Wants Us Out

Things like this have been happening in the Iraqi government for a while now:

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum)....

We have said again and again that we are in Iraq with the consent of the sovereign government, and that if the Iraqis asked us to leave, we would gladly show ourselves the door. The momentum is very much in the wrong direction on that score, and if they give us any reason to claim the defeat there wasn't our fault, I expect us to jump at the opportunity.