Our Moral Duty to the Iraqis

President Bush keeps reminding Americans of the bloodbath that would ensue in Iraq if U.S. troops left.

His sincerity is reflected in a New York Times report today on the fate of Iraqis who are in danger because they worked for the U.S. The headline: “Obstacles Keep Iraqi Refugees From U.S.”

Red tape is stranding all but a few who have to leave their country and go to Syria, Lebanon or Jordan to apply for permission to come here. From October to July, 190 Iraqi refugees have arrived in the U.S., according to the State Department, which expects 2,000 by the end of next month and “considerably more” next year.

Ali Saleh, a 37-year-old interpreter who worked for the military for four years told the Times he was barely able to leave his neighborhood in western Baghdad, let alone take his wife and 2-year-old son to Jordan. In four years, eight colleagues have been killed. He quit this spring when a woman working as an interpreter who lived nearby was kidnapped and killed.

Although few can take advantage of it, refugee status is available to hundreds of interpreters but not to the estimated 69,000 workers of American contractors, who are also targeted for reprisal by Iraqi militants.

While Bush keeps talking about our duty not to abandon brave Iraqis, our government is not doing much to protect them while we can.

Lame Duck a la Bush, Side Order of Rice

While Karl Rove was doing his TV victory lap, another Bush stalwart has been missing in action. Condoleeza Rice, once touted as a possible ’08 Presidential candidate, has been out of sight.

A week ago, there was a public moment as the Secretary of State appointed baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. the nation’s Sports Envoy, starting with a trip to China.

Since then, we have had Rice’s written statement congratulating the Somalia National Reconciliation Congress on completing Phase One of an agreement to stop killing one another--and silence. At yesterday’s Departmental press briefing, her name was not mentioned.

Ironically, as she was disappearing from media radar this month, Rice was named by GQ Magazine “The Most Powerful Person in Washington,” ahead of George Bush and Dick Cheney, one of the hazards of the long lead time of monthly journalism, as I can testify from experience.

It may be that Rice has reached a critical point in the tension between fierce personal loyalty to George W. Bush and her understanding of what history will say about her tenure as Secretary of State.

For months now, rather than front for the lame duck disaster in Iraq, she has been working the fringes of Middle East policy, trying to establish some communication with Iran, joining Secretary of Defense Gates in urging Saudi Arabia to clamp down on Sunni terrorists and making efforts to unblock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.

After Rove’s announced departure, her spokesman announced that she will stay the course of the Bush Presidency. But at this point, Condoleeza Rice may also be keenly aware of what loyalty has been doing to the arc of her life from growing up in segregated Birmingham to being named on Time Magazine’s list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People four times and twice as the Most Powerful Woman in the World by Forbes since the turn of the new century.

Complete career suicide is unlikely to be on her agenda for the future.

Mighty Mouth Eats the Media

Michael Moore is like one of those huge cartoon creatures on Monty Python that would suddenly open its maw and swallow up the contents of city blocks. This week Wolf Blitzer, Sanjay Gupta and all of CNN are in the path of his giant jaws.

For a time, the Mouth with a baseball cap was funny and even marginally useful with his cutesy primers: Gun Control for Dummies, George Bush for Idiots and now Health Care for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention.

His shtick of confronting the rich and powerful was amusing to a point but, now that he has expanded beyond a cottage industry, Moore is blurring the lines between self-promotion and being a total pain in America’s ass.

To promote “Sicko,” he has eaten his way through the State Department, Fred Thompson, Good Morning America and is now regurgitating CNN on his web site while chomping on “secret” memos from Blue Cross trembling in fear of his film.

Get it together, Michael. Others were against corporate greed, wanted gun control before you were born and tried to stop the war in Iraq, so get out of our faces and take it outside and start playing nice with the other rich kids. Being obnoxious while raking it in is not the only career choice.