Good news

A group of Muslim nations have offered to send troops to Iraq - if the UN gets to call the shots.

This is good news. So many of Iraq's problems come back to the trigger-happy attitude of American soldiers. Getting them off the streets (and ideally, out of the country entirely) will almost certainly result in fewer dead Iraqis and a better overall security environment. Arguably it's what should have happened in the first place, but Bush's poisoning of world opinion against him put paid to that.

Of course, it all rests on power being turned over to the UN. At this stage Bush is probably willing to do anything to dump the hot potato in someone else's lap (and boost his re-election chances), but other people in his administration are going to fight this tooth and nail. Hopefully Pakistan, Malaysia etc will use their new leverage to push for a real transfer of power, rather than just a fig-leaf.