Rice and Cheney Are Said to Push Iraqi Politicians on Stalemate -NYT

[Rose Siding]

Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.

The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.
...
Ms. Rice on Friday telephoned Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to urge him to complete the government "as soon as they could" and "to get a status of where things were," a senior State Department official in Washington said Sunday. The official stressed that Ms. Rice did not tell Mr. Talabani how to form a government, just that the process needed to be concluded.

Also, Adil Abdul Mahdi, a leading Shiite politician selected as one of the new Iraqi vice presidents, met with Ms. Rice and Vice President Cheney at the White House, the official said, where he was also told that the White House wanted to see a government formed right away.

http://nytimes.com/2005/04/25/international/middleeast/25iraq.html?hp&ex=1114401600&en=f6b8cb430aa0aaf0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Roland99]

1. Why don't we just build the government for them?

I suppose the neocons thought a new Iraqi government was as easy to put together as a PTA meeting?

[oblivious]

2. Shall I pretend that the US is really a disinterested outsider?

Well, why not, the "senior State Department offical" is playing the game.

In that case I would suggest Ms Rice mind her own business.