Good Idea

Rep. Bill Delahunt is one of those guys who you don't hear much about, but who's a solid progressive who's often tried to show leadership on issues that tend to get ignored. For example, according to Spencer Ackerman tomorrow he's hit on the bright idea of having two Iraqi parliamentarians opposed to the Bush/McCain/Maliki perpetual occupation policy come testify before his subcommittee:

Live from the Rayburn building, Rep. Bill Delahunt's (D-MA) Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight will hear from Sheikh Khalaf al-Ulayyan of the Sunni Accordance Front and Nadim al-Jaberi of the Shiite (and anti-Moqtada, anti-Maliki) Fadhila Party. Both men oppose an open-ended U.S. troop presence, which is a rather popular position among the Iraqi people.

I doubt parliamentary opposition in Iraq will, in practice, be a serious impediment to this policy since the local occupying power tends to have ways of making the occupied government see things its way if push comes to shove. Still, the parliamentary opposition, like the opposition in public opinion, is a token of how ill-advised this approach is.