Juan Cole Becoming Hill Staffers' New Best Friend

Ask yourselves how, after so many Iraqi purple fingers wagged proudly, we can expect we won't get "the middle finger" (stained or unstained) for arresting the very people they elected! Talk about mayhem and confusion. From Informed Comment [Juan Cole]:

KarbalaNews.net reports that a joint American-Iraqi (apparently American-led--see the picture) force invaded the offices of the elected provincial council of Wasit in the Shiite South and arrested two elected members of the council. They took away Qasim al-A'raji and Fadil Jasim Abu al-Tayyib without making any announcement of the charges. [..] This is sort of as though in the US, federal troops attacked the South Carolina State House and arrested the elected secretary of state and treasurer. [..] You can't celebrate elections and purple fingers and self-determination, and then have foreign troops involved in arresting elected officials. It looks colonial...

So much for U.S. troop support for the McCain Doctrine/Bush Escalation. Professor Cole says:

One thousand active-duty soldiers and Marines have come out to call for a quick US withdrawal from Iraq. Take that, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute!

Ah! It seems that Hill staffers will be able to more breezily coordinate with Professor Cole now that most Americans (and a growing number of active duty troops) are in agreement against perpetuating this failed foreign policy.

Senators will introduce a bipartisan resolution in the senate condemning Bush's escalation of the Iraq War with an extra 21,500 troops. [..] I remember doing a briefing on the Hill in June of 2004 on Iraq, to a distinctly less than full room of staffers and I think no congressional representatives. Some of the staffers came up and gave me their cards and sheepishly admitted that it was very hard to get their bosses interested in taking a stand on Iraq.