Sharing is caring and the surge

A cult of personality has been built around General Patraus where both the both pundits and politicians can't help but fall over themselves to show they can suck his dick better than the rest and speak of him as a one-man phenom who will singlehandedly bring those 'raqi's into line. The standards seem to be so revised now that instead of leaving a country that is stable, with a democratic government, and an ally in the war on terror as Bush once said, a moderate drop in the level of violence is considered an oustanding success story.

The moderator at the debate yesterday, Charlie Gibson, argumentatively challenged (at about 5:00 below) the democrats at the debate to admit the surge is working and they should have supported it. He even talked of the de-baathification as if it were the best thing in the world instead of what mainly created the insurgency. They managed to keep their composure and bring the focus back to the big picture for the most part, or blame everything on the Iraqis like Hillary did.
ut while talking about that question the oil sharing law, which you may remember as one of the benchmarks congress made a few years ago for Bush to report on regarding progress in Iraq, was brought up a few times. Almost from the start of the war, this one particular benchmark was emphasized often as one of the most important. Though not much was ever said about the details in the mainstream media, which is surprising given the prominence of it in the debate here. It shouldn't be that hard, quite a few countries around the world use revenue from oil or other natural resources either to fund public projects or give it directly to their people as cash (The US is not one of them). The Iraqi oil law has yet to get passed. The US has had a heavy hand in shaping what that law might be, mainly PSA's, which most Iraqi's probably don't want since foreign companies would get most of the money.