White House ignores fourth anniversary of Baghdad's Fall, as "100 years of crisis are sown in Iraq"

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: The White House Commemorates a Very Special Day
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, April 10, 2007; Page A02

As Iraq observed the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein yesterday, the lead item on the White House Web site, under the heading "LATEST NEWS," was a photograph of Clifford the Big Red Dog at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn.

"There were many children's characters in attendance including Charlie Brown, Bugs Bunny, Arthur, and Curious George," said the caption under the photo, which alternated with a shot of Laura Bush and two Easter bunnies on the Truman Balcony and a painting of one of President Bush's Scottish terriers with a fiddle-playing butterfly.

The president marked the anniversary by going to Arizona to give a speech -- about immigration. In his 24-minute address, he didn't so much as mention Iraq. The vice president, secretary of state and secretary of defense had no public events on their schedules yesterday.

That pretty much ceded the field to Iraqi politician Ali Allawi, who gave a speech in Washington yesterday as he released his new book, "The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace." Allawi was not the most recognizable of figures; the Washington Times and his host, the National Press Club, both identified him as "Ari" Allawi, giving him a rather Jewish-sounding name for an Iraqi leader. But Allawi's somber presentation may have been the ideal way for a war-weary Washington to remember Baghdad's fall on April 9, 2003. Allawi brought grim tidings and no obvious solutions.

The book condemns the "monumental ignorance" of American war planners and the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation authority. Allawi had previously written that the Middle East is in a "death spiral" and that "another 100 years of crisis are being sown" in Iraq....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/09/AR2007040901263.html?hpid=topnews