Largest Sunni Party Pulls Out of Election

From The Boston Herald

The largest Sunni political party, the Sunni Iraq Islamic Party, has withdrawn from the January elections citing the security situation as a reason.

The party's secretary general says "when a house is on fire, you should first put out the fire before working on decorating and arranging it."

My 2 cents. It begins to become obvious that the Sunni moslems, well outnumbered by Shia, will claim that the credibility of the election is destroyed and use that as a further fuel for the insurgency. Since the Iraqi Army has been given a total of four old tanks and no other heavy equipment, it would be lunacy of the highest order (the neocons will say) to leave Iraq to be convulsed by internal fighting and effectively defenceless to external aggressors or to an "Anchluss" with Shia Iran. The Shia parties being courted by the US (see the Newshog briefs yesterday and previously) see their own power being eclipsed if Iran becomes highly influential in Iraq and will also back the US occupation for the four more years Rumsfield predicted.