3 of 5 top Iraqi Gov positions are council members

[mburbank]

Even more, they need people who won't immediately ask us to leave. I don't think even picking the players guarantees that.

If they publicly ask us to go, we're screwed. We can't really say yes, and if we say no, then we've demonstrated they don't have sovereighnity. We'd be forced to say we won't leave until until a democratically elected government tells us to (and we'd have a hard time doing it even then).

But how will a government headed by people we picked be able to demonstrate legitimacy to the Iraqi people short of asking us to leave?