Speaker 2: I have another question, David.
David: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Recently I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who is an Iraqi-American. He is originally- his family is originally from the Al Anbar, so you can imagine his politics but he is now been in Iraq since sometime in 2003 as an advisor in Iraqi government. He presented a very pessimistic view basically the parliament is unable to reach compromises; the constitutional reforms are [interpose] almost like to see [IB]. Furthermore, there was the assassination recently of the Sunni leader of the parliament…
David: [IB], yeah.
Speaker 2: There’s no employment for the Sons of Iraq, the Sawa, 90,000 of them sought jobs or would like to have jobs, 5,000 of them are employed. There is the decrease in oil prices which means in very short scan that there is less grease for the greasy- for the squeaky wheels so there’s less lubrication here. The Kurds are unhappy and overall, he thought this all might come to ahead and then course of the parliamentary elections in January of 2010, and furthermore will be completed if the referendum about the so-called SOFA, the US withdrawal agreement is postponed again because it all focused down to on US-Iraqi relations. So bottom line, his six months prognoses are longer, is pretty bleak.
David: Yeah. But those are all legitimate worries, I mean the situation is very bad it’s a [IB] and very difficult. The question is it difficult enough to bring the whole system down. I think one thing I believe is, you know, the Shia did not wait 90 years or 80 – 90 years to their- as the majority to have the right to run the country only to have it break up. I think they will try everything possible to keep it running and Maliki has shown that he is almost like a Lebanese politician, I mean he has been able to make remarkable comprises and he has made some deals with some members of the Sunni opposition. He is trying to keep the Sunnis from forming, you know, a unified block. I think and the Iraqis are resilient. I think there will be good bit of violence. I know- too soon to tell what the out- today is the last day of at least the US ground combat present in the cities. There will be more violence certainly how bad it will be, we don’t know yet. But I think there’s a reasonable prospect that as bad as the situation might get that the Iraqis can keep it together and that’s what I say we should be minimalist, we just wanted to stay together and be able to function and not become a haven again for Al Qaeda and everything else falls on the would-like to have category, not must have, you know, we’ll see. But as you know as he says, Ryan Crocker, I’ve heard talked says with the thing we need in Iraq is “strategic patience”. We are gonna have to have a lot of patience and we’ve gonna see a good bit of violence. The question is can they survive it? And I think there is a reasonable at least they could.