Our new Sunni friends in Iraq

The NY Times reports today that the Sunni Accordance Front -- the largest Sunni Arab political bloc in the parliament -- has withdrawn its cabinet ministers from the al-Maliki government in Baghdad. Just yesterday I had been reading Marc Lynch's entry at his Abu Aardvark blog, "Islamic Army of Iraq takes issue with certain American claims," about the nature of the Sunni insurgency's recent cooperation with the US military in battling Al Qaeda in Iraq. Amongst other things, Lynch mention that the IAI has been calling for the Sunni Accordance Front to withdraw from the al-Maliki government, which the IAI considers to be a tool of Iran.

Lynch cites an IAI website, specifically 'a July 19 posting on the IAI's official al-Boraq forum attributed to the Amir of the Islamic Army in Iraq entitled "a letter to the American and Arab people"; to the best of my knowlege, the American people haven't received the letter, so I thought I'd pass it on.' One of the points the "letter" makes is that 'American claims that the insurgency is either declining or aligning with the Americans and the Iraqi government are pure fantasy, and in fact the number of [Sunni] "mujahideen" is increasing.'

The whole post is well worth reading, as is the comment thread, in which one commenter lays out a scenario in which we are arming the Sunni Arab nationalists in an attempt to build a balance of power with the Shia in anticipation of our ultimate withdrawal, with a Shia/Sunni, Iran/Saudi cold war as the end result. Not sure where the Kurds would fit into this scheme.

Space opera pseudonym

Okay, I've decided that rather than Virgil Eon Banks, as I'd originally thought, my space opera pseudonym should be Virgil Eon Tucker, in honor of the man who coined the term "space opera". Nickname: Verge. Initials: VET. I'm not seeing a downside yet. Well, okay, it's probably worth remembering that Tucker coined the term to identify a crap subgenre that he wanted stamped out.