Saw this on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS...g.ap/index.html

At first I thought it was a high point in Bush's speech (ironically, it had nothing to do with what Bush said). It was a touching moment seeing this common Iraqi citizen be so emotional, hugging those parents of the fallen soldier. But those damn bloggers on those damn "internets", they dug up some info. on who exactly this Iraqi woman was, portrayed as a common Iraqi citizen to the public. Here's the guts of the story:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/3/61911/26777

Why, she happens to be an associate of those lovely far-right wingers, like Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirpatrick, Steve Forbes, and your lovely PNAC assortment like James Woosley, Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol, and Charlie Krauthammer through a foundation she published an article for, the "Foundation For the Defence of Democracies." (www.defenddemocracy.org).

Oh, and these guys have the audacity to call themselves, "nonpartisan". Yep, just like the Swiftboat Vets were "nonpartisan" too, huh?

But it gets better.

While true that her father was killed by Saddam's intelligence service, there's a bit more to that story than meets the eye:

quote:

US Secretly Helped Saddam Al Bawaba – December 20, 2003 The daughter of a prominent Iraqi opposition leader, who was assassinated in Beirut by Saddam Hussein's secret service in 1994 said she would sue the ousted Iraqi president before three international courts, charging that the U.S. was a virtual accomplice in her father's murder. Nora al Tamimi, daughter of slain Iraqi opposition activist Taleb al Suhail al Tamimi, said from Beirut in a newspaper interview published Saturday that her father had planned a coup d'etat to overthrow Saddam in 1993, operating from Beirut and Amman. "Zero hour was set for a certain June day in 1993 to stage the coup when Saddam would have been sponsoring an official event in Baghdad," Nora told the London-based Asharq Al Awsat newspaper in an interview conducted at the family house in Beirut. "But the Americans, who did not want the coup to succeed possibly because they were certain my father would not go along with their polices, tipped off Saddam about the impending putsch by my father and gave the names of his top aides," Nora said. "All of them died in Saddam's torture chambers." Sheik Taleb Al Tamimi, who led a million-member Central Iraqi tribe called the Bani Tamim, was shot dead April 12, 1994 at his apartment in Beirut's Ein El Tineh district in an assassination officially blamed by the Lebanese authorities on four Iraqi embassy diplomats, who were detained and then released on the grounds they enjoyed diplomatic immunity, Nora recalled. Saddam has severed Baghdad's diplomatic ties with Beirut upon the detention of the four. Nora said she plans to sue Saddam at the United Nations, before the International Court of Justice at The Hague and before the world organization of human rights. Nora said her sister Saffia, 38, a human rights activist, has already returned to Iraq and is currently making the needed arrangements in Baghdad to recover the family's bank accounts and property, which were confiscated by Saddam in 1968, when her father fled Iraq. She said the family would return to Iraq soon with the remains of her father for reburial in his native country. http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=1379

So as the blogger says:

"Summary? The Safia's sister blames the United States for not protecting her father and telling Sadaam about a pending coup attempt because they didn't trust Safia's father."

To top things off, she also happens to be the new Iraqi governor's Ambassador to Egypt:

http://www.kurdistancorporation.com...ambassadors.htm

While you are looking at this list, note that the interim Iraqi government’s ambassador to the United States, and therefore an associate of Taleb Al Souhail is none other than a blood relative of both Allawi and Chalabi who themselves are blood relatives. Small world, huh?

That's right, folks, she is a member of the Iraqi interim government, a member of the Iraqi exiles, a powerful member with some pretty interesting familial and political ties, don't cha think? She is an Iraqi political elitist with right-wing connections to the same people who got us into this war in the first place. She is not an everyday Iraqi, but simply our tool on the ground in Iraq to ensure along with Allawi and Chalabi that American military bases are scattered throughout the country on top of the world’s second largest oil reserves.

You guys remember Chalabi, right? That guy who was Bush's guest in the 2003 SOTU speech, and not only lied through his fucking teeth to us about WMD (which Judith Miller of the NYTimes obsessed over and printed prior to invasion), but likely is a fucking Iranian spy to boot.

Obviously, image is everything to Bush. Of course, he likely learned this trick from poppa Bush, displaying the Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter:

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

So let's keep something in mind here. Does she really portray the interests of the Iraqis, or the interests of the PNAC neocon fucks who are running our foreign policy into the ground? One really has to wonder.....

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...