Goodbye Iraq, and Good Luck

I’m in the provincial headquarters building in downtown Kirkuk — the oil-rich district of northern Iraq that is the most disputed corner of this country. The provincial leaders — Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians — have come to meet America’s top military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with whom I am tagging along. All 11 Iraqi leaders are seated on one side of a conference table and local U.S. officials have provided me a color-coded guide, identifying each Iraqi politician, their political tendencies and religious affiliation. Each Iraqi leader tells the admiral, through an Arabic translator, why his or her community deserves to have this or that slice of Kirkuk, until it comes to a Kurdish representative, who announces in English: “I want to tell a joke.”