Baghdad - Rohrabacher. Bugger Orf

Seems I'm not the only one that found Dana Rohrabacher's remarks, what shall we say, a tad unconventional? Sling your hook, the message coming out off Baghdad.

Iraq asks US congressman to leave over 'repay' remark

Rohrabacher calls for Baghdad to repay part of the money spent by Washington since 2003 invasion.
June 12 2011


BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities asked for a US congressman to leave the country after he called for Baghdad to repay part of the money spent by Washington since the 2003 invasion, a spokesman said on Saturday.

Republican representative Dana Rohrabacher's remarks at a news conference in Baghdad stood in stark contrast to those by senior American officials, who have pressed Iraqi officials to decide soon whether they want US troops to stay beyond a year-end withdrawal deadline.

"We called the US embassy yesterday and we told them to ask the congressmen to leave Iraq," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. "We don't want them here. What they said was inappropriate."

Dabbagh said Rohrabacher and his congressional delegation had not raised the issue in a meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, contradicting the US politician's comments that he had spoken about potential repayments with the Iraqi leader.

It was not immediately clear if Rohrabacher and the delegation were still in the country when the request was made.

"Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country... we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years," Rohrabacher told journalists at the US embassy on Monday.

Rohrabacher, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the US House of Representatives, declined to give specifics on how much should be repaid, or over how long.

US embassy spokesman David Ranz said that while the mission "has a responsibility to host congressional visitors," the views of the politicians "do not necessarily express the views of the US administration or even a majority of the Congress."

He declined to comment on Dabbagh's remarks.

Around 45,000 American troops are still in Iraq, mostly tasked with training and equipping their Iraqi counterparts.

All US troops must withdraw from the country by the end of the year, under the terms of a security pact, but US officials have been pressing Baghdad to decide quickly whether or not it wants an extension.

Dabbagh said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani would lead a meeting of the country's political leaders "very soon" to deal with "issues related to the American withdrawal from Iraq."

Rohrabacher was leading a bipartisan US congressional delegation on a visit to Iraq, primarily to look into a raid by Iraqi security forces in April on the Ashraf camp housing thousands of exiled Iranians in which at least 35 camp residents died.

Previous: US Rep Dana Rohrabacher. Do They Have Seasons on Your Planet?


Dissident Voice expands the thing.

Bizzaro Capitalism

Imagine an unbidden exterminator comes by your house and begins to disinfect and kill pests around your house. You arrive home later to find your cat is dead, and your baby is turning green and a green slime is oozing from the corner of her mouth. You rush her to the hospital which is overrun with patients whose properties have received unrequested extermination treatments. While waiting in queue your daughter dies from a severe allergic reaction to the chemicals used by the exterminators.

There are other deaths, but some victims manage to recover from the harm caused by the exterminators.

Weeks later, the exterminator bills you and the others since, they claim, the pests were eradicated. How would you react?

Now take the above scenario and apply an analogy a thousand fold more bizarre and outrageous. Recently, a United States congressman had the chutzpah to ask Iraq to repay the United States for aggressing and occupying (still ongoing) it. As if the Iraqi resistance needed more reasons to continue than the over one million lives snuffed out, the 4 million or so Iraqis made refugees, the outbreak of disease and infant malformations, a destroyed infrastructure, a destroyed economy, etc… more