where's the gratitude?

Maliki raises possibility that Iraq might ask U.S. to leave

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki raised the possibility that his country won't sign a status of forces agreement with the United States and will ask U.S. troops to go home when their U.N. mandate to be in Iraq expires at the end of the year.

who can we liberate next?

News headline: Cuban oil production could be a catalyst for a change in relations with U.S.

Winning Hearts and Minds! (WHAM!) (cont'd!)

83 percent of countries in 2002 had a plurality of citizens judging the United States favorably; by 2006 only 23 percent of countries had a plurality saying that U.S. influence is positive.
-- "The Decline in America's Reputation: Why?" - House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight - June 11, 2008

finally, some good news

With the help of the Defense Department, the Los Angeles-based company C3 is "developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum" and "is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland." More than that though, the Pentagon is also backing a $5 billion plan to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. embassy that will include luxury hotels, a shopping center, and condos in an effort to "transform" the Green Zone into a "centerpiece for Baghdad's future."

Iraq reneges on our deal, or, Winning Hearts And Minds! (WHAM!) (cont'd!)

You would think that after we spent a trillion dollars to rip their society to s#i+, they'd show a little more gratitude.

Iraq: U.S. has no claim to oil boom
'America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,' Baghdad official says

And on the "Mission Accomplished" anniversary, no less...

Also: still clearly having trouble with the "puppet" concept.

so quit yer whinin' (Smiff)

Woofie: ‘The Occupation Of Iraq Ended In June 2004′

dudes... if you're not a puppet, why is Cheney's fist so far up your @ss he can wiggle your arms?

Iraqis bristle as U.S. opens world's largest embassy

BAGHDAD — For the average American who will never see it, the new US Embassy in Baghdad may be little more than the Big Dig of the Tigris.

Like the infamous Boston highway project, the embassy is a mammoth development that is overbudget, overdue, and casts a whiff of corruption.

For many Iraqis, though, the sand-and-ochre-colored compound peering out across the city from a reedy stretch of riverfront within the fortified Green Zone is an unsettling symbol both of what they have become in the five years since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and of what they have yet to achieve.

"It is a symbol of occupation for the Iraqi people, that is all," says Anouar, a Baghdad graduate student who thought it was risk enough to give her first name. 'We see the size of this embassy and we think we will be part of the American plan for our country and our region for many, many years."

The 104-acre, 21-building enclave - the largest US Embassy in the world, similar in size to Vatican City in Rome - is often described as a "castle" by Iraqis, but more in the sense of the forbidden and dominating than of the alluring and liberating.