Dennis Ross' speech last night marking Israel's 56th anniversary was an interesting piece; I'll work up my notes a little later today. For now, let's move on to the new Iraqi flag, unveiled by the IGC today:



As most news outlets are reporting (well, not FOX), Iraqis aren't terribly happy with the new flag because it (A) singles out the Kurds for recognition (inexplicably placing them between the Tigris and Euphrates), and (B) forswears the use of the red, black and green colors of virtually every other Muslim and Arab nation in favor of a blue and white color scheme that looks a lot like the Israeli flag.

Now, I understand why the Coalition might not want to invoke the red and black colors of Nasserite pan-Arabism, but on a flag that already has the Islamic crescent, why refuse to use green at all? Why use a color and design that is, to put it mildly, a source of some controversy in that region? And why explicitly reference the Kurds on the flag when you have an admittedly smaller but still diverse set of ethnic groups in the form of Turkomans and Assyrians?

The flag flap is not a major issue, but this kind of geopolitical tone-deafness is just another example of the institutionalized incompetency of our delegates in Iraq.