The Iraqi Steve Hadley.
Sometimes I just can't really add anything.
A description of a Congressional visit to Iraq:
A description of a Congressional visit to Iraq:
Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.
Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."
"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."
But even such tight control could not always filter out the bizarre world inside the barricades. At one point, the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. Rubaie was watching children's cartoons.
When Moran asked him to turn it off, Rubaie protested with a laugh and said, "But this is my favorite television show," Moran recalled.
Porter confirmed the incident, although he tried to paint the scene in the best light, noting that at least they had electricity.
This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on
Friday, August 31, 2007.
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1:54 PM
Given who was visiting and the likelihood of any of the three actually listening to what he may have wanted to say, leaving the television on struck me as an intentional slight of his visitors.
2:03 PM
No doubt. But I read an interesting book by Carville and Begala some years ago in which they pointed out that if you don't wish to suffer fools gladly you shouldn't be in politics.
Intentional or not, it was stupid and amateurish. He should have realized it would get picked up. And even if he assumed Moran was a foe, he had a GOP rep there, too, a potential ally.