National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru relates an incident on board the John McCain bus, the Straight Talk (sic) Express (sic) --
I asked whether Middle Easterners might react negatively to his speculation that we could stay in Iraq for 100 years. He got a little testy. “I have never heard of an uprising of Kuwaitis, have you?”
A little Googling of Kuwait --
(CNN) -- Kuwait's parliament has confirmed Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as its new emir, ending the political crisis that erupted after the parliament removed Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah last week for health reasons.
The 50 members of the parliament, along with the 14 members of the cabinet -- excluding the 77-year-old al-Sabah, who is the prime minister -- voted unanimously on Sunday.
Parliament voted Tuesday to remove the ailing Saad, 75, who came to power briefly after the recent death of the country's long-ruling emir. The cabinet then recommended al-Sabah for the position.
Kuwait (like Bahrain) has real politics in which public unrest bubbles up right to the top. It would be a primary candidate for attitudes towards a long-term American occupation in the region to sour -- which would be another remarkable achievement for George W. Bush, given the esteem with which his father and the 1991 liberation is held in Kuwait. But as Bush discovering, by the end, you've alienated everybody.
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