Wednesday, October 3, 2007

"Iraq is a soverign country"

I find it interesting that I had to go to Al Jazeera English to learn that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had a meeting at the White House yesterday. It makes me wonder whether or not Representative Henry Waxman knew that the Iraqi President would be in town. I suspect that Talabani would have provided a valuable perspective on the current investigation of Waxman's committee into Blackwater's practices in Iraq (which finally seems to be attracting the attention of the mainstream media, despite the fact that Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater has been out for some time and holding a good best-seller position). More likely, President Bush wanted President Talabani all to himself as a weapon in what are sure to be contentious Congressional debates over the funding of the Iraq war. Continuing along the theme of postmodern thinking, if Bill Clinton will go down in history for questioning the semantics of "is," Bush may be remembered for playing the same game with the semantics of "progress," in the hopes that he can turn a sow's ear into a Coach knock-off, if not a silk purse:

The US has defended Iraq's lack of political progress after Jalal Talabani, the country's president, visited the White House.

Pressed on the lack of progress towards reaching political benchmarks that George Bush has called critical to quelling sectarian violence, Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said "Iraq is a sovereign country".

In other words the United States should not be held accountable for the mess in Iraq because the Iraqis are merely exercising the sovereignty that the United States helped them achieve. Does Bullwinkle plan to pull any more rabbits out of his hat before the primaries begin?

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