Condi Rice - 'Searching for attackers lurking in the night'...

[bridgit]

There is enormous political symbolism in the circuitous route that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took for visiting Baghdad on Monday. She headed first to the quiet British town of Blackburn for a weekend's bonding with her British allies, and then proceeded to Iraq, accompanied by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Any limited perspective on the Rice-Straw mission in terms of cajoling Ibrahim al-Jaafari to give up his prime ministership in Baghdad overlooks that Iraq is the cornerstone of the United States' imperial venture in remaking the Middle East, with the objective of controlling the region - its flows of oil, weapons and money. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD08Ak03.html

[Kutjara]

1. It was a little embarassing for the British government.

They had this whole raft of fun activities planned for Condi's visit: trips to mosques, meetings with muslim leaders, meetings with various town dignitaries, trips to colleges and schools. Unfortunately, they had to keep changing the itinerary due to all the protesters waiting at each planned venue. Its a bit hard to carry off the "Merrie Old Englande" schtick when all you see are flying eggs.

[rodeodance]

2. oh, those Brits showed us up again!

[madokie]

3. That they did

[demgrrrll]

4. I was in Liverpool when she was there and I tried to get to the protest.

I could see the protesters on the night before she arrived at the event but the police had everything blocked off so I could not get close to the people who were protesting. I walked all around the building but every street and entrance was blocked. I was going to write about this while I was over there but I forgot my code and was not able to write. The papers reported that there were about 2000 protesters the night she was actually at this venue. I was at a pub close to the protest and there were signs that read Yankee Go Home and others signs about torture. I would say that the response to her visit was predominately negative. She tried to talk about the Beatles when she was there and mentioned she had always wondered about the 4000 holes in Lancashire?in one of the Beatles songs. Apparently this was embarrassing because she was talking about potholes in the roads. Security was incredibly tight with a high number of police officers present the night she attended the event. The police surrounded the building and adjacent streets.

[bridgit]

5. "the Beatles"!?!?! oh were it the case we could fill but one, huge...

bottomless pit of a black hole in Crawford, TX; the world would be a better place imo