Talabani and Ahmadinejad Buddy Around
This video of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visiting Tehran last week and hanging around gleefully with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad raises many questions:
Didn't Bush say to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, "We're proud to call you, friend, Mr. President, and proud to have you as an ally in the war on terror." ?
Didn't Bush put Iran in the Axis of Evil, and didn't he make "a direct appeal to the Iranian people from the United Nations, telling them their leaders were misleading them about U.S. intentions while using their national treasury to sponsor terrorists and build the bomb."? And isn't the Bush administration charging Iran with destabilizing Iraq?
So how come Talabani is hanging around with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad wreathed in smiles?
Why was it reported that,
' "Talabani, for his part, appreciated the guidelines of Leader of the Islamic Revolution about Iraqi reconstruction and contribution of Iranian government to Iraqi nation's progress and welfare. "Baghdad is keen on sharing experience with Tehran to implement economic development projects." President Talabani said that both Iranian and Iraqi governments are working for prosperity and progress of the two nations. '
How come Talabani blamed Iraq's Arab neighbors, not Iran, for the country being destabilized?
And, finally, wasn't Talabani supposed to have lost weight at a clinic in Minnesota recently?
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/01/2007 12:30:00 AM
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5 Comments:
I noticed the same about Talebani's weight. Doesn't extreme morbidy obesity reflect some kind of mental problem or character flaw? It doesn't make sense because the Religious-Right Republicans consider gluttony to be a grave sin. Yet they are the very people propping up Talebani to be their oil puppet.
So the Kurds, Iran, and the neocons use each other when convenient. What else is new?
In any case, I fail to understand why Americans think they should or could dictate to Iraqis who they meet.
Criticising the Arab countries and blaming them for the failures of the Iraqi regime goes back to Sharm al Shaikh so called International Pact for Iraq.
The Iraqis, rather than providing the most basic services in Iraq, prepared an elaborate regional plan!
The baffled Gulf states were given a blue print for countless billions as investment in Iraq on the basis that prosperity will fix Iraq's problems and thereby prevent instability from spilling into the Gulf!
The plans called for enormous funds to go into tourism in Kurdistan for example, which is curious since it has no beaches or night life whatsoever.
How about the corruption and the disappearence of the Iraqi professionals needed for such "Explosive Reconstruction" as they described it? Oh, we promise to fix things later.
The cunning plans where presented to the Saudi King who agreed to meet Saleh, the Kurdish PM deputy in charge of planning and Masood Barzani, who probably wanted to make sure he gets his rightful share.
As one can imagine the King did not sign any checks. To compound things further, Barzani made a public statement that the Saudis offered him $2 billions if he agrees to delay the vote on Kirkuk which he galantly refused. This is most unbelievable, since few weeks earlier Talabani told al-Rai news-paper [see:
https://qs1474.pair.com/isafetyn/preview.php/post/1921/Embassies_to_Spy_on_Dissidents_Abroad
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that “We in the Kurdistan region can take control of Mosul and surrounding Arab areas within hours,” Those areas are the the Shammar clan HQ areas, who happened to be the Saudi King's cousins on his mother side and whose 1.5 million people extend to Saudi and the Gulf too. How on earth would he pay the Kurds money they can buy weapons with to kill his cousins?
The Maliki was snubbed when he later asked to see the King, so the Iraqis have decided "no more Mr nice guy" and will punish the Arab world to teach them to co-operate or else.
When is Gonzales going to issue treason arrest warrants for Bush and Cheney?
They couldn't have aided and abetted this enemy of the US if they tried.
So I presume they did
I can't work up any outrage about Talabani meeting with Ahmedinejad. He speaks fluent Farsi and has negotiated with many, many Iranian political leaders over the years. The fact that he has a jovial public persona should not disguise the fact that Talabani is as clever and agile a survivor as exists in Iraq. Talabani switched sides three times during the Iran-Iraq war, holding together his political movement and protecting his supporters as best he could. Indeed, he's famous for having few permanent enemies.
Maybe Talabani is too flexible, but we are all witnessing the ongoing train-wreck caused by Bush's inflexibility and stark Manichean world-view. Talabani has advocated forcefully for US-Iranian talks, he has done more to try to hold together Iraq than Barzani or most other leading Kurdish politicians, and he is a secular man from a socialist background. I wish Bush had Talabani's intelligence, subtlety, linguistic skills, and ability to see shades of grey rather than just black and white.
When I see Talabani with Ahmedinejad or Bush, I see an obese and very clever man expertly leveraging his few resources with immature, foolish men who should never have been entrusted with tremendous power. I see Talabani doing what he did during the Iran-Iraq war, keeping his constituents and his movement alive.
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