In the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze," the world's most famous private detective refers to "the curious incident of the dog in the night." "But the dog did nothing in the night," replies his interlocutor. "That was the curious incident," says Holmes. The dogs aren't barking over the U.S.-Iraq treaty, either, and that is equally curious.
To begin with, the Iraqi dogs aren't barking. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki clearly doesn't like the deal that the Bush administration is forcing on him, but will accept it because his government wouldn't survive a week without U.S. military support. The Shiite religious authorities will not issue a fatwa against it, because their first priority is to preserve the Shiites' newfound domination of Iraq. But in fact most Iraqis who know about it, hate it.
That includes most of the Iraqi Parliament's 270 members, who recently sent a letter to the U.S. Congress asking it to reject any U.S.-Iraq security agreement unless the White House agrees to a timetable for pulling troops from Iraq. But Congress will not get to vote on the deal, because the White House has defined it not as a treaty (which has to be ratified by the Senate), but as an alliance (which doesn't).