Juan Cole reports this morning that the United States (as the occupying power in Iraq) is now legally responsible for paying reparations to Kuwait for Iraq’s invasion in 1990. Paul Bremer has asked Kuwait’s government to suspend the reparations, but they have refused. There’s probably more to the story, but that looks like serious ingratitude to me. We got Kuwait out from under Saddam’s thumb in 1990, and then in 2003 we made sure that his regime would never threaten Kuwait again (Saddam wasn’t much of a threat to us, but he was always a threat to Kuwait), and they’re leaving us on the hook for the reparations? What’s going on here?

Cole also adds some depressing context to the Iraq poll numbers that were much discussed last week. Apparently the results of the polling are not as rosy as most of the people citing the poll would have you believe.