Iraq - Iraqis won't run

and neither will we.

This report talks about Iraq's "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's decision to think the unthinkable and come out with a national reconciliation plan", the difficulties entailed and how he's over coming them.

According to sources within the new Iraqi government, sections of the coalition that supports al-Maliki in Iraq's parliament, the National Assembly, were also opposed to reconciliation in any form. At one point last May, two key groups within the coalition even threatened to walk out if al-Maliki insisted on the plan.

Al-Maliki, however, managed to isolate the critics within his coalition with discreet but no less decisive support from Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, the primus inter pares of Shi'ite theologians in Najaf. By last week, the only Shi'ite group still opposed to the reconciliation plan was the entourage of Moqtada al-Sadr, a young firebrand mullah with a base in the slums of northeast Baghdad.

What's also not being reported by MSM is how Maliki is taking on Sadr. There is a big push in Baghdad against Sadr with scores of his men killed and his right hand man arrested.

The results have been stunning.

BY LAST week, 22 Arab Sunni armed groups had agreed to join the process initiated by al-Maliki. According to Akram al-Hakim, the minister in charge of national dialogue, the groups that have come on board account for a majority of those who have been fighting in the four Sunni provinces since the autumn of 2003.

And Maliki is finding support from the Arab world.

One way to persuade them of that is to withdraw the massive media, and in some cases political and financial, support that the insurgents have received from several Arab countries. This was the message that al-Maliki took to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during a whirlwind tour of the region last week.

THE VISIT was significant because this was the first time since the creation of Iraq as a state in 1932 that an Iraqi head of government was paying state visits to the three neighboring nations.

Others are starting to realize that the new Iraq is the real deal and is here to stay.

LAST WEEK the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a grouping of 57 Muslim majority countries, ended its boycott of new Iraq by reopening its offices in Baghdad.

The OIC has announced the creation of a committee of the foreign ministers of seven member states to produce a plan for helping new Iraq. It has also agreed to co-sponsor a "national dialogue" on Iraq in Cairo next month.

All of which is sending a clear and strong message to the terrorist - you've lost.

One slogan of the insurgents and their terrorist allies, and those Arab regimes that did not like the liberation of Iraq, was based on the hope that the coming of democracy to Iraq would be a temporary nightmare. The slogan was: "They will run away when the Americans run away!"

Al-Maliki's message to the Arabs last week was simple: Our allies are not running away, and we are here to stay!

There are signs that this message is beginning to be heard across the Arab region.

None of this would have been possible if anyone listened to the Democrats.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------