Bartlett On Cancelled Maliki Meeting: ‘It Was Going To Be More Of A Social Meeting Anyway’

[RedEarth]

Today’s widely anticipated meeting between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki was abruptly canceled. CNN suggests that it “was put off to Thursday after a U.S. memo cast doubt on al-Maliki’s ability to deal with the sectarian warfare in Iraq.” Bush counselor Dan Bartlett put that speculation to rest with this clear explanation:

BARTLETT: The President is going to have a bilateral and dinner with the King of Jordan. Since the King of Jordan and Prime Minister Maliki had a bilateral themselves, earlier today, everybody believed that negated the purpose for the three of them to meet tonight, together, in a trilateral setting. So the plan, according to — since they had such a good, productive bilateral discussion, was just for the President to deal with bilateral issues and other issues with the King this evening in a dinner setting, and then the meetings set for tomorrow will still take place as scheduled.

Is that clear? No? Ok, here’s more Bartlett:

QUESTION: The King and the Prime Minister had a meeting, but the Prime Minister hasn’t seen the President since he got here, and the President changed his schedule to come here for this meeting.

BARTLETT: The President requested the meeting. This was the President requesting the meeting with the Prime Minister. And the substantive meetings on Iraq — look, they were not going to be doing a full detail discussion in a trilateral setting about Iraq and the future of Iraq and the strategy anyway, that just wouldn’t be appropriate. So it was going to be more of a social meeting anyways. But the fact that they had already had a good meeting together, felt like it negated the purpose to doing so. And the President and Prime Minister Maliki will have a very robust and lengthy dialogue tomorrow morning.

So the President flew to Jordan to have a “social meeting” with Maliki, which Maliki decided not to attend. There’s nothing more to it. That should put all the speculation to rest.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/29/bush-malaki-canceled-social/

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Can We Call Baghdad Bob Yet?

[hatrack]

2. Then why bother going all the way to Jordan for a social call?

Ever heard the word "teleconference", Commander Bonehead?

[Supersedeas]

7. the incompetence is really really astonishing on so many levels

[Beetwasher]

3. Maliki Was Quoted As Saying: "Yeah, It Was A Social Meeting

and I thought to myself 'do I really want to hang out with that asshole?', and of course, my answer was 'no, who the hell would?', so I cancelled"

[Nite Owl]

4. So how much taxpayor money

did we have to spend for him to go socializing and making a fool of himself?

[karlrschneider]

5. So, Chimp did the lateral, Maliki took the pass...who will punt?

:rofl:

[XboxWarrior]

6. Well my satellite got shut off.....

couldn't pay the bill, however they give me three freebies!

1) the Nasa channel

2) the Sky Angel Promo channel (with free Faux News)

3)(and most appreciated) the CCTV9 channel (Chineese news in English)

It was funny that they were reporting this last night that the Iranian pres, and the Iraqi pres, (not Maliki, but Talibani) had met and signed a pact.

I think there is a very different side of this story that is NOT being reported in the USA......(like Maliki has no power?)

peace