The US seems to be backing off. This is good. Maybe there are some adults in charge that know when to fold. The next week should be very interesting. Unfortunately, I won't be here. I start my trip to Washington, DC, and New York City today. I fly out tonight. It's going to be interesting relying on newspapers to tell what is going on, which means I won't know what is going on. But you, dear reader, can check out the political blogs in my blogroll for up to date coverage. I wonder what the world will be like when I get back on the 29th? Here are two parting links...

Climbing down in Iraq?
by Helena Cobban

I think the weekend's fighting in Qusaybeh must have come as a shock to the US commanders there. Somehow some of those "sneaky" (or should we just say well organized?) insurgents from Fallujah and Ramadi had managed to spirit themselves 150 miles to the west and launch a fairly large-scale ambush there. Despite Gen. Myers' huffing and puffing about a possible Syrian role in it, it seems there wasn't one-- though Qusaybah is right there near the Syrian border. In addition, the insurgents' ability to render many vital roads unsafe-- allied of course to the fact that the drivers of many of the U.S. military supply convoys aren't members of the military and therefore can't be forced to drive when they are scared to--means that many U.S. forward units have come close to facing shortages. Logistics, logistics, logistics. The Brits--as I've mentioned before here, more than once-- should have remembered that this is what can really stymie western military adventures in Iraq. [...] So I'm hoping, hoping, that having gone right up to the precipice of a broad collapse of its military positions inside Iraq, the Bush administration will now sensibly climb down considerably further. The main focus now should be on a new and workable Security Council resolution that truly puts the U.N. in the driver's seat and gives it the tools to succeed. For that to happen, the Bushies would have to eat some serious crow (from the point of view of the neocon hardliners). But the rest of us shouldn't gloat and start screeching "I told you so!" If they do the right thing, we should support that. This evening, on the BBC t.v. newsfeed we get, no less a figure than Harlan Ullmann-- the author of "Shock and Awe" himself--was on, saying that the administration had been needlessly escalatory and needed to quickly find a way to de-escalate. Amazing. Let's hope he represents something big and meaningful there... Meanwhile, it is already quite clear that after the Intifada Wataniya in Fallujah, Ramadi, and the Shi-ite areas, nothing in Iraq will ever again be remotely the same as Bremer and Co. had planned it to be>/u>. All those ultra-expensive "reconstruction" plans... all those intricate political plans... none of them are at all feasible between now and June 30. What will June 30 be? The day of handover to the U.N., if anything. It'll be interesting to see what else will happen between now and then.

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Road Perils in Iraq Add to Chaos, Shortages

At a sprawling desert camp in southern Iraq, U.S. soldiers sleep in trucks and Humvees because Iraqi merchants are afraid to deliver tents to them. On a key road through the Sunni Triangle, masked men with Kalashnikov assault rifles occupy the concrete-block checkpoints the U.S. military once used. And at Baghdad's airport, goods are piling up because Iraqi truckers refuse to brave the main highway to the capital or transport the material to other U.S. bases. In Baghdad's central market, Iraqi shippers and merchants fret that business is drying up. Of all the sudden changes in Iraq during the last month, control of the roads is among the most striking. The U.S.-led coalition has been unable to hold on to all of its supply and communication lines on vital routes leading from the capital. Insurgents have blown up key bridges, rocketed fuel convoys and seized hostages. Though there are no serious shortages, the perilous state of Iraq's roads adds to a sense of chaos in much of the country. Over the weekend, the military announced it would close two of the country's biggest arteries to civilian traffic in an effort to get the fighting under control, cutting into Iraqi commercial life and raising fears of an economic slowdown. "It's a good measure of how the coalition is doing when you can get in a car and drive to the Jordanian border and down to Najaf without worrying about it," said Charles Heyman, a senior analyst at Jane's Consulting Group, citing two of the routes that are occasionally under insurgent control. The fact that one cannot take those roads, he said, "is not a good sign."

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