Iraqi Leaders Opine Safely From Afar

AMY GOODMAN: It was interesting to see last night, Iyad Allawi interviewed on CNN. He was in Beirut, I believe it was. And he was asked — Wolf Blitzer asked him, “Do you feel safer today in Iraq than you did a year ago?” He couldn’t say yes.

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, there’s a very good reason for that, and there’s a very good reason he’s sitting in Beirut and not in Baghdad. …

[I]t’s a running joke in Iraq, in Baghdad, the number of Iraqi government leaders who are outside the country at any one time. At one moment last year, or this year, rather, a Baghdad newspaper calculated that the entire — every cabinet minister was outside the country.

The president, Jalal Talabani, was saying a couple of months ago that most of Iraq was quiet, but you have to look at where he was saying this: He was saying it in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

So you just have to get off the plane in Baghdad or look anywhere around the city to realize that this is a place in chaos and this is the most dangerous place in the world. More below:

Most of Iraq is today a bloody no-man’s land beset by ruthless insurgents, savage bandit gangs, trigger-happy US patrols and marauding government forces….