Let’s stop kidding ourselves. These people don’t want peace. Let’s pull out and let them have at it.

A new political accord between Iraq’s main Sunni Arab, Shi’ite and Kurdish leaders will not be enough to lure boycotting Sunni Arabs back into the government, a spokesman for the biggest Sunni Arab bloc said on Monday.

In a rare positive political development, Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi joined Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other leading Shi’ite and Kurdish politicians to announce late on Sunday that they had agreed on key issues.

Although they did not announce details, they said they had agreed on a mechanism for releasing detainees, the text of a law on distributing oil revenue and measures to readmit former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to public life.

All of those were key demands of the Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, which triggered a political crisis by pulling its six ministers out of Maliki’s government on August 1. Hashemi is a member of the Front but did not resign his post.

But Saleem al-Jubouri, a leading Front member of parliament and spokesman, said the deal reached on Sunday would not by itself be enough to lure the ministers back into the cabinet.

“We are not boycotting political dialogue, but this does not mean that we are returning to the government,” he told Reuters.

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Speaks for itself.

Iraq’s political crisis worsened Monday as five more ministers announced a boycott of Cabinet meetings _ leaving the embattled prime minister’s unity government with no members affiliated with Sunni political factions.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed at least 28 people in a northern city, including 19 children, some playing hopscotch and marbles in front of their homes. And the American military reported five new U.S. deaths: Four soldiers were killed in a combat explosion in restive Diyala province north of the capital Monday, and a soldier was killed and two were wounded during fighting in eastern Baghdad on Sunday.

The new cracks in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government appeared even as U.S. military officials sounded cautious notes of progress on security, citing strides against insurgents linked to al-Qaida in Iraq but also new threats from Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Despite the new U.S. accusations of Iranian meddling, the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors met Monday for their third round of talks in just over two months. A U.S. embassy spokesman called the talks between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, “frank and serious.”

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Trying to figure out the Arab mind is like trying to figure out how God came about. I can’t fathom either, although I know God just always was and is.

I read this New York Times piece and I honestly can’t tell who’s telling the truth and who isn’t.

During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

The Saudis are Sunni and Maliki and the Iranians are Shiites.

We know Maliki was aligned with al Sadr and that al Sadr hides out in Iran when things get too hot for him in Iraq. We also know Maliki is trying to paint a rosy picture of any meetings between the U.S. and Iran that discuss the future of Iraq.

On the other hand we know the Saudis have said if we leave Iraq they will supply weapons and support to the minority Sunnis in that country. We also know the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11 were almost all Saudis, if not all Saudis.

When you start dickering with these Bedouin-type people, who are so very tribal in everything including the sect of their religion, you realize you are dealing with people who will lie right to your face and do it in a way you believe them.

They will smile to your face while picking your pocket or turning a knife in your back, so reading this story just tells me what I already knew: You can’t trust these people.

Lying and deception are a part of their cultures and they have been since the beginning of time.

If I were about to be killed I would not want either one to be on my side as he would just as likely kill me as the next guy.

I’ll take the Israeli. He has more integrity.

This is an interesting article, though, especially if you look at it as a people who will deceive the devil himself if they thought they could get away with it.

We simply can’t trust the Shiites or the Sunnis to give us the unvarnished truth that we would stake our lives on their word.