That Pleasant Market, Those Kind Iraqis

Glenn Greenwald has a great post today (as he does pretty much every day) about once again just how silly that walkabout in Baghdad by McCain was. If you watched the video on the post I linked to the other day you may have noticed a big guy (Republican Rep. Mike Pence) confessing how emotional it made him that the people in the market were so kind, and how one rug seller in particular tried to refuse his money. NPR interviewed that exact rug seller later on, and the results are incredible. Here's an amazing quote:

"I didn't accept the money. I said to myself, they must be guests, so I must give them a good impression of Iraqis. After all, we are occuped by these Americans, and they are accompanied by a lot of U.S. security."

So they go on a big stroll to show how well everything is going, accompanied by 5 helicopters and 100 soldiers, and then the market gets shot up the next day and their best example of a "heart and mind" that's been won over is a guy who just wants to stay on the good side of the occupiers.

He then goes on to state that he supports the resistance, and he doesn't understand why they didn't try to shoot and McCain and his pals. I think this little episode just about sums up how hopelessly jumbled this whole war has become, and how it's impossible to tell anything for sure. Except by counting bodies, anyway.