For some reason, the Iraqi Prime Minister's order for the US to abandon their mandatory checkpoints in Baghdad isn't making headlines on BBC or The Washington Post. However, I found it buried on the NY Times website, and there are two pictures on Yahoo! News (1, 2). The lack of coverage is ridiculous! This could be huge! It might let Iraqis see an empowered government that can be relied upon to end the occupation on its own terms. Though maybe this is just Maliki appeasing the Shi'ites, which would mean that the sectarianism and Sunni resentment of the government is really really bad and a solution will be longer in coming. I hope that there are still enough moderate Iraqi's left to figure it all out once the US gets out of the way (hopefully that will be soon. REMEMBER TO VOTE!). Looking at how the residents of Sadr City are reacting to the first day of being able to travel without mandatory searches, I hope the result is the former: