George Has Some Terrorizing Friends

I heard some time ago that George Bush wants terrorists dead or alive, but then again, he doesn't think too much of them anymore. Well not thinking about someone and being best buds are two very different things. Sattar Abu Risha isn't your average Irfaqi citizen, so maybe that was why our President sat down to meet him. Abu Risha heads the Anbar Salvation Council, a group that promotes civic participation his own quest to be a local warlord. So what would these two be meeting about you ask?

From Abu Aardvark:

....That's our guy. That's the pillar of America's Sunni strategy, and a key player in Fred Kagan's fantasy life.

And I didn't even mention the widely discussed, sensational rumor that he had skipped town with $75 million in American cash - which evidently wasn't true, or else was just a "misunderstanding" which has been "resolved", but does speak to endless circulation of unpleasant rumors about the guy's corruption and mercenary behavior. I wish I could have been there as Abu Risha nodded along sagely while Bush promised to funnel large-scale American economic development funds in Anbar, perhaps offering the services of his own highly professional office in seeing to the disbursement of the funds. It's kind of humiliating to watch an American President get rolled by a two bit, corrupt petty shaykh.

But that's not even the worst of it. According to one widely disseminated account of their meeting, Bush acted shocked when Abu Risha complained about Sunnis being killed in Baghdad because of their names, claiming he had never heard of such things. It's impossible to know the accuracy of this account, since it comes out of an Iraqi press not known for its fealty to professionalism or standards of evidence. But if true, what an astonishingly depressing admission of ignorance of one of the most important aspects of the Iraqi situation: he has never heard of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad.

Highway robbery? Ethnic cleansing in Baghdad? Jiminy Crickets! Who woulda thunk it?