Today, in a surprise move, the US handed over limited power to the Iraqi interim government two days ahead of schedule. Honestly, I think that was a good idea. There’s a better than average chance that the rebels would have been planning something spectacularly awful, so I think moving it up by two days was a good idea.

Do you remember the Frank Herbert series, Dune? In the first book the ruling house stayed inside the capital city. The city had giant walls to keep out the huge sandworms and to lessen the impact of massive sand storms. It also gave them lots of control over who came and went. But the royal families holed up there completely separated from their subjects or charges.

And that’s what the “green zone” in Baghdad feels like based on news reports. It sounds like they’ve made this one sector very secure and the foreign nationals rarely leave it. I haven’t been there so I don’t know, but that’s what it sounds like. It really reminds me of Dune. It sounds very isolated. But I guess its that isolation that protects the residents.

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