Insurgent groups offer peace accord:

Eleven Sunni insurgent groups have offered to halt attacks on the US-led military if the Iraqi government and President Bush set a two-year timetable for withdrawing all foreign troops from the country, insurgent and government officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The demand is part of a broad offer from the groups, who operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala. Although much of the fighting has been to the west, those provinces have become increasingly violent and the attacks there have regularly crippled oil and commerce routes.

The groups do not include the powerful Islamic Army in Iraq, Muhammad Army and the Mujahedeen Shura Council, the umbrella label for eight militant groups including al-Qaida in Iraq. But the new offer comes at a time when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is reaching out to militant Sunnis, including a new amnesty plan for insurgent fighters.

We’re dreaming if we think Team Chimp would ever accept these terms. First of all, its not so much an offer than it is a reiteration of the same demands implicit from the very beginning and merely echoes bin Laden’s and the World Islamic Front’s for peace in exchange for regional withdrawal. Secondly, it flies in the face of Bush’s overall plan to establish 14 permanent military bases in the country. Yet I’ve little doubt that the administration will tout this as progress and milk it for all it’s worth.