Do they even care.
I don’t know what else to say. While our men are dying on their streets, they are showing a complete lack of urgency.
This isn’t a post against the war.

Missing from Thursday’s session of the Iraqi parliament were about half of the members, including the speaker, the former speaker and two former prime ministers.

Also missing: a sense of urgency.

American officials have been pressing Iraqi leaders to prove their commitment to ending sectarian strife by enacting landmark legislation before mid-September, when the Bush administration is to present its next report on Iraq to Congress.

But even as parliament’s monthlong August break approaches, key issues aren’t being discussed. Quorums are marginal, or fleeting.

Despite the high stakes here, the Iraqi parliament appears to be deliberating at a pace to rival plodding legislative bodies around the world.

Thursday’s session, the 50th of the year, convened half an hour late.

A bell rang in the Convention Center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137 as some members walked out after the first vote. The speaker on occasion has dismissed parliament for falling below the quorum of 100 legislators, but on Thursday, they proceeded. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name roll call took half an hour, a quarter of the time, in what turned out to be a roughly two-hour session.

Those present circulated an agenda of 11 items, none related to the legislation Washington has been demanding, including laws concerning oil investment and revenue-sharing between regions, reintegrating former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime into government, disarming militias and holding provincial elections. Some members say the modest agendas at recent meetings are a symptom of parliament’s inability to overcome sectarian divisions and cobble together the two-thirds majority needed to pass major legislation.

“There’s a deficit in our performance, both in quantity and quality, especially when it comes to [passing] legislation. The fact of the matter is our will is big, but our action is too little,” said Saleem Abdullah, a member of the Sunni Tawafiq parliamentary bloc who missed Thursday’s session due to other official business. “It will affect the [American] view of the success of the political process in Iraq.

“It will show there haven’t been any achievements in the political process.”

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