Iraqi who had been touted as a symbol of success (by Bush) departs, moves to U.S.

[sabra]

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON | Two years ago, President Bush hailed Najim al-Jabouri as a symbol of success in the battle to curb Iraq’s sectarian violence.

Today, Jabouri is a symbol of how uncertain that success is.

Last month, Jabouri quietly left Tal Afar, an ancient city near Iraq’s desert border with Syria where he was the police chief and the mayor, collected his wife and four children, and flew to safety in the United States.

“There was no other choice,” Jabouri, 52, a retired Iraqi army lieutenant general, said in a recent interview that was translated by his eldest son, Omar, 21. “I had been serving my homeland, the Iraqi people and Iraqi soil my whole life.

“I decided I had to do something for my own family. I saw that their lives were in great danger.”

Jabouri risked his life for three years working alongside U.S. and Iraqi commanders to maintain communal calm after helping to quell ferocious atrocity-fed fighting between Shiite and Sunni Muslims that was fueled by al-Qaida in Iraq.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/867977.html

[barbtries]

1. i just can't express

how much i deplore this war that should never have happened. i'm glad this one family is safe; as they should all be.

[tanyev]

2. Hey, maybe George and Laura will let the family come live with them.

[floridablue]

4. There is some room at the ranch.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. 2006: Bush gives whole speech about the success of Tal Afar; 2007: 142 killed by bomb, 70 shot

The speech: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060320-7.html

The bomb and the retaliation: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/02/iraq.main/index.html