{"id":288,"date":"2007-05-09T14:43:16","date_gmt":"2007-05-09T19:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=288"},"modified":"2007-05-09T15:24:25","modified_gmt":"2007-05-09T20:24:25","slug":"cheney-was-not-moved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"Cheney Was Not Moved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Language\" content=\"en-us\" \/> <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\" \/><title>The Associated Press offers this<\/title>The <em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/05\/09\/AR2007050901412_pf.html\"> Associated Press<\/a><\/em> offers this account of Cheney&#8217;s visit to Iraq:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that Iraq remains a dangerous  \tplace, a point underscored by a thunderous explosion that rattled windows in  \tthe U.S. Embassy where he spent most of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Cheney spoke less than an hour after an explosion could be heard in the  \tU.S. Embassy where he spent most of the day. Windows rattled and reporters  \tcovering the vice president were briefly moved to a more secure area.<\/p>\n<p>Said Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride: &#8220;His meeting was not disturbed  \tand <strong>he was not moved<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>McBride was presumably commenting on the vice president&#8217;s whereabouts rather  than his mood.<\/p>\n<p>Cheney was undoubtedly in Iraq to move rather than be moved.\u00c2\u00a0 A <a href=\"http:\/\/home.businesswire.com\/portal\/site\/google\/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&#038;newsId=20070509006023&#038;newsLang=en\"> transcript<\/a> from Cheney&#8217;s press briefing certainly gives the impression that  the vice president pressed the Iraqis to make progress on Khalilzad&#8217;s old &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=164\">benchmarks<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>QUESTION: Thank you, sir. You said you were impressed by the responses  \tthat you heard from Prime Minister Maliki and his colleagues. Did they offer  \tany specific commitments, particularly time commitments, in moving forward  \ton some of the specific measures that you and other American officials have  \ttalked about; namely, hydrocarbon law, de-Baathification, provincial  \telections and constitutional reform?<\/p>\n<p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: I believe that Prime Minister Maliki plans an address to  \tthe parliament this week on many of these issues \u00e2\u20ac\u201c [cough] excuse me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and,  \tof course, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a political process that depends upon action by their  \tlegislative body. And but as I say, I do believe that there is a greater  \tsense of urgency now than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen previously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Is Cheney unhappy with Maliki?\u00c2\u00a0 Did Cheney threaten to dump Maliki,  casting an eye toward &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.atimes.com\/atimes\/Middle_East\/IE09Ak07.html\">Saddam  without a Mustache<\/a>&#8220;?<\/p>\n<p>I have my doubts.\u00c2\u00a0 As I have previously noted (<a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=274\">here<\/a>  and <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=279\">here<\/a>), some of  Cheney&#8217;s would-be Right Zionist allies have recently declared themselves <em>quite<\/em>  satisfied with Maliki.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, as the Washington Post recently suggested, there are allegedly  at least <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/04\/25\/AR2007042503076_pf.html\"> three outstanding &#8220;political&#8221; issues<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Re-Baathification:<\/strong> Khalilzad pushed very hard for re-Baathification.\u00c2\u00a0  Does Cheney care?\u00c2\u00a0 Not if his thinking in any way matches that of <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=227\">Reuel Marc Gerecht<\/a> at  the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oil<\/strong>: Yes, I think Cheney wants to hydrocarbon law passed.\u00c2\u00a0 But  here the primary obstacle may not be Maliki so much as <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=284\">Kurdish resistance<\/a> to  the bill&#8217;s centralization of control.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Constitutional Reform<\/strong>:\u00c2\u00a0 The most contentious issues here seem to  involve Kurdish regional autonomy and Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution  which includes provisions for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/homepageCrisis\/idUSIBO734724._CH_.2400\"> a referendum on control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Here again,  Kurds represent the major source of resistance to constitutional revisions.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=45\">Sadrists<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rferl.org\/featuresarticle\/2007\/05\/B3CF37F6-B3F6-4C1D-8A39-22055C2E106B.html\"> Sunnis<\/a> stand united in opposition to Article 140 and Kurdish control of  Kirkuk.<\/p>\n<p>All of which suggests that if anyone in Iraq is pressing for the parliament  to <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtontimes.com\/upi\/20070509-072454-1482\">take a vacation<\/a>,  the Kurds would be the most likely slackers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Associated Press offers thisThe Associated Press offers this account of Cheney&#8217;s visit to Iraq: Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that Iraq remains a dangerous place, a point underscored by a thunderous explosion that rattled windows in the U.S. Embassy where he spent most of the day. Cheney spoke less than an hour after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}