BAGHDAD, April 3, 2007
McCain Visit Angers Some Iraqis
Merchants At Oft-Bombed Market Say Heavily Guarded Tour Doesn't Reflect Reality
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Play CBS Video Video Has Baghdad Become Safer? Iraq's government reduced the Baghdad curfew by two hours, saying the security situation has improved since the crackdown in February. But locals seem to think otherwise. Martin Seemungal reports.
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Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insists a U.S.-Iraqi security plan is working. (AP Photo/Sabah Arar)
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Girls in school uniforms lie at a hospital bed in Kirkuk, Iraq, on April 2, 2007. (AP Photo/Emad Matti)
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A medic helps a wounded man in Kirkuk, Iraq, 180 miles north of Baghdad, April 2, 2007. (AP Photo/Emad Matti)
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Interactive American Heroes Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.
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Interactive Iraq: 4 Years Later The conflict wears on as the nation struggles to rebuild.
Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a 42-year-old who sells electrical appliances at the Shorja market that the Republican congressmen visited on Sunday, said the delegation greeted some fellow vendors with Arabic phrases but he was not impressed.
"They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests," he said. "Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit."
Leading a congressional delegation to Baghdad's oldest market over the weekend, Sen. McCain praised the safety of the city since the American troop surge, reports Martin Seemungal for CBS News.
But according to someone who was actually with the delegation, that sense of security required a massive military operation: dozens of U.S soldiers, snipers, and helicopters hovering overhead.
The shopkeepers were back Monday, adds Seemungal, but they confirmed that Sen. McCain's delegation could never have come here without heavy security.
McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he was "cautiously optimistic" after riding with other members of a Republican congressional delegation from Baghdad's airport Sunday in armored vehicles under heavy guard to visit Shorja.
The market has been hit by bombings including a February attack that killed 137 people. The delegation said the trips were proof that security was improving in the capital.
McCain acknowledged a difficult task lies ahead in Iraq, but he insisted a U.S.-Iraqi security plan was working, citing a recent drop in execution-style sectarian killings, the establishment of security posts throughout the city and Sunni tribal efforts against al Qaeda in the western Anbar province.
"These and other indicators are reason for cautious, very cautious optimism about the effects of the new strategy," the Arizona senator said.
The congressmen, who wore body armor during their hour-long shopping excursion at the Shorja market, said they were touched by the resilience and warmth of the Iraqi people, some of whom would not take money for their souvenirs.
The delegation was accompanied by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and followed his lead in taking off their helmets as they bought souvenirs and drank tea.
"I didn't care about him, I even turned my eyes away," Thamir said. "We are being killed by the dozens every day because of them. What were they trying to tell us? They are just pretenders."
Karim Abdullah, a 37-year-old textile merchant, said the congressmen were kept under tight security and accompanied by dozens of U.S. troops.
"They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they were tourists and were visiting the city's old market and buying souvenirs," he said. "To achieve this, they sealed off the area, put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of armed American soldiers."
But Abdullah applauded the congressmen for venturing out of the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies as well as Iraqi government offices.
"Although these U.S. officials were using this visit for their propaganda to tell the Americans 'we are gaining progress here, don't worry,' it left a kind of good impression with some of us," he said. "They are at least better than Iraqi officials who never venture out their Green Zone to talk to normal people and see their problems. I hope that this visit will encourage Iraqi officials to leave their fortified houses inside the Green Zone."
McCain and fellow Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana and Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona traveled Monday to Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad that also is part of the security crackdown to which President Bush has committed some 30,000 extra troops.
The congressmen met with provincial police as well as Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, who is leading a growing movement of Sunni tribesmen who have turned against al Qaeda-linked insurgents in Anbar, the military said in a statement issued Tuesday.
In other developments:
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- How much death and destruction has Bush unleashed?
Think just of our 3,250 dead troops and 800 dead US mercenary contractors. If you lined up their coffins they would stretch for 5 MILES. Think about that next time you are driving along the highway, the lined up coffins rushing past you at 60 miles/hr for 5 minutes. Think about each the grieving families of each coffin, think about the fatherless kids.
Drive for another couple HUNDRED miles and you get the idea on how many Iraqis are dead from the Bush War.
When will the Cheney/Bush merderous thugs be sent to JAIL for DELIBERATELY LYING us into this needless, horrific War??
JAIL BUSH
JAIL CHENEY
THEY BELONG IN JAIL for their CRIMES! - Reply to this comment
- I want McCain "The Fake" to be forced to pay US TAX PAYERS back for the elevated security provided for him on his trip to prove that there"%u201Care neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.%u201D
That one day of special security for him to act safe probably cost US TAX PAYERS over $500,000 in Security related expenses!
Hey McCain, we'll take a check! - Reply to this comment
- SHAME ON MCCAIN,you'd think someone who went through the Viet Nam war would have more thoughts for our military.But hey maybe he's bitter and taking it out on the boys and girls of those who protested his war.McCain the new G.I.Jane in reverse.
- Reply to this comment
- Iraq is in a Civil War. Get our troops out!
"The shopkeepers were back Monday, adds Seemungal, but they confirmed that Sen. McCain's delegation could never have come here without heavy security."
Says it all: His visit was just propaganda. The city is not protected that way on any given day unless a US presidential hopeful is visiting with US TAX PAYER security keeping him safe as he acts like things are better! A waste of TAX PAYER dollars! - Reply to this comment
- It must have been a real sight to see!! 150 armed bodyguards, 20 armored Humvees buzzing around, attack helicopters circling overhead.
McCain (in full body armor) standing in fromt of one of the few remaining open-air markets trying to force a grin for the photo-op while screaming through clenched teeth,"hurry up... get this over with!!" - Reply to this comment
- McCain you have been hanging out with Bush too long and change your slogan on your bus from STRAIGT TALK to DOUBLE TALK go back to the senate it is all over but the shouting.
- Reply to this comment
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Larry_Johnson_responds_to_McCains_Baghdad_0403.html- Reply to this comment
- "McCain's complete loss of his "maverick" nature is just another sign that Republicans are losing themselves in a groupthink delusion that borders on the psychotic. It was bad enough that they were willing to lie to pursue their economic agenda, it's quite another thing when they actually start believing their own lies. ..."
tucson23
"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened%u2014that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death."
George Orwell, 1984
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed%u2014if all records told the same tale%u2014then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
George Orwell, 1984
"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
George Orwell, 1984
"Every key I strike is recorded by the state."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com - Reply to this comment
- The Straight talk Express now looks like it has been reduced to the BS Express. I don%u2019t know what John McCain hopes to achieve by parroting the same lies about Iraq as others who have wrongfully served the US including: The intellectual midget George Bush, Cheney the Chicken Hawk, and Ronald, rose-tinted-glasses, Dumsfeld. It%u2019s as if McCain has a hammer in his hand and continues to ask for nails to pound into his own coffin. Has he not learned that merely pretending to believe that something is so is not the same as reality? With end of month casualty reports in, the month of March was just as bloody as previous months. Violence is down marginally in Baghdad but higher elsewhere. If it so wonderful over there, why was McCain wearing a bullet proof vest, and surrounded with armed guards while helicopters were flying overhead? But then again maybe it is as the right-wingers think, that violence really is down, but the liberal media conspiracy has it ALL wrong just to make Bush look bad. As if he can%u2019t do that well enough by himself. Since McCain is foolish enough to endorse Bush%u2019s stupid, stay-the-course policy, it might the reason why McCain has raised less money than any of the major presidential contenders in either party. The BS express is heading straight into a brick wall.
- Reply to this comment
- McCain's complete loss of his "maverick" nature is just another sign that Republicans are losing themselves in a groupthink delusion that borders on the psychotic. It was bad enough that they were willing to lie to pursue their economic agenda, it's quite another thing when they actually start believing their own lies.
A reasonable person would conclude that the insurgents in Baghdad were laying low, or moving to the rural areas, while the surge is going on. Republicans believe that the surge is working instead. A reasonable person would have realized long ago that there's no military solution to the problems in Iraq. Republicans send more troops and argue for a completely open-ended committment. A reasonable person wouldn't say it's safe to walk around in Baghdad, then go out surrounded by troops and wearing a helmet and a flak jacket.
Saddest of all perhaps is that there's still ANYONE in America that still supports this party and actually believes these transparent lies. I guess some people are pretty d a m n stupid. - Reply to this comment
Gen. Ray Odierno, head of multinational forces in Iraq, on progress there and plans for Afghanistan.
