Iraq Picks American as Ambassador to U.S.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/international/middleeast/23AMBA.html?ex=1070168400&en=ba8d5bcbe811c228&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 22 — An Iraqi-American activist whose foundation has spent much of the last decade devising visions of democratic rule for Iraq and lobbying for a war crimes trial of Saddam Hussein, will become the country's diplomatic representative in Washington, Iraqi political leaders said Saturday.

Her appointment will be announced in the next few days by the interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, they said.

The activist, Rend Rahim Francke, 54, has directed the Iraq Foundation, which she helped create in 1991, and is a familiar face in Washington from her years lobbying policy makers to provide more muscular support for opponents of Mr. Hussein.

Her new job, she said in an interview here, as a representative of the Iraqi Governing Council, will be a kind of informal ambassadorship.

She said she would represent the emerging Iraqi authority and speak "for the nascent Iraqi government."

"It is awkward," she added, "because technically Iraq is still a country under occupation."
<snip>

That's convenient.

This whole Iraq fiasco reads more and more like a bad screenplay.

[kskiska]

1. Very strange

They searched the entire country and couldn't find an Iraqi citizen for this post?

[IndianaGreen]

2. This is like putting CANF in charge of post-Castro Cuba

How lovely to see America become a colonial power!

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

13. They don't even try to hide anything anymore.

[Cocoa]

3. that's cute

just like South Vietnam and all its trappings of a real government.

[IndianaGreen]

5. At least President Ngo Dinh Diem was Vietnamese

not some dual citizenship jerk that recites the American Pledge of Allegiance with the "under Gawd" phrase that Congress inserted in 1954.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Chalabi is Arabic for Diem, isn't it?

Just asking.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. My sensation is

There is NO such thing as a country named Iraq right now.

[markses]

9. There is no country there but the war

.......

[LeftistGorilla]

10. you're right...

Islamic revolution hasn't happened yet...

[0007]

6. You can bet that Rend Rahim Francke has a hot line to Ahmed Chalabi....

Check out this website and look at the folks that are involved in COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ (CLI) - hope it doesn't surprise you!!

http://www.endthewar.org/whoiscli3.htm

....and speak "for the nascent Iraqi government" What a joke!

[NNN0LHI]

7. Mission Accomplished! n/t

[0007]

8. I believe Richard had it right -

"the moral shock of our nascent imperialism” (Richard Hofstadter).

[Jack Rabbit]

11. Actually . . .

Doesn't that mean that Americans picked an American to be the Iraqi ambassador to the US?