Beleaguered Iraqi leader puts off Gates meeting
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived here on Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, but the prime minister said he was too busy to see Mr. Gates because he had to defend himself before a Parliament outraged by a recent series of bombings.
American defense officials insisted that Mr. Maliki had not rebuffed the defense secretary, but it was not until late on Thursday, hours after Mr. Gates landed in Baghdad, that they said that Mr. Maliki had agreed to see him on Friday morning. Mr. Gates’s aides scrambled to rearrange his schedule. [continued…]
At this point I too would be too busy to see SecDef Gates– even Obama– because they let themselves be pushed around by two mediocre– one good the other bad media manipulating generals—on Afghanistan, thus making themselves weak leaders of ill repute; all that Iraqis want to see is our backs as we leave. Obama had to dig up old Bush speeches because Bush speech writers were unwilling to come forward to spin why Obama spit in the face of the Nobel Committee giving him the Peace Prize. The Clinton kidnapers are holding Obama prisoner in the White House for a 2012 ransom. As speechwriters they could only obey the Clinton rule: FOLLOW THE POLLS and couldn’t write a majestic babble of illogic as Bush’s speechwriters wrote for Bush. The Nobel Committee might have saved itself embarrassment by giving Obama the novelist award for his two books instead of the Peace Prize.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121063974
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL10Df04.html
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/12341-how-we-got-to-zero-general-eikenberrys-hail-mary.html