VP Cheney’s pep talk to Iraqi politicians and American GIs falls on deaf ears

Reports that the Iraqi Parliament is planning a two-month summer break provoked American critics of the Iraq war to vent what little outrage they had left. But this, in turn, prompted the preternaturally tone-deaf President George W. Bush to dispatch VP Dick Cheney to Iraq this week to scare those insolent and indolent Iraqi politicians straight.

And, one can just imagine Cheney warning them and their Iranian warlords that if they retreat to their summer homes in Iran as planned, when they return, not only will there be no American GIs left in Iraq to cover their asses, but that a new Saddam and unreformed Sunni fedayeen (Uday Hussein’s specially-trained torturers) will be in charge, and all too happy to greet them.

Unfortunately, what the White House says in Iraq these days has even less resonance and respect than what comes out of it in the USA. Therefore, don’t be surprised if Iraqi politicians take their break and ignore all of the reconstructed “benchmarks” that Bush and the Congress are haggling over to repackage and send to Iraq as a pretext for keeping American soldiers in the killing fields over there indefinitely.

NOTE: My CNN commentary on the Haitian boat tragedy - published here yesterday - unwittingly inspired such rabid calls for retribution against the TCI police that I felt obliged to write a follow-up commentary admonishing against a rush to judgment, which is published here today.


VP Cheney in Iraq