Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Leaving A Man Behind

In response to a request, really a demand, from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the US military has discontinued the checkpoints they had set up in and around Sadr City in order to find a missing and presumed kidnapped soldier.

This will effectively end the search for that soldier, yet also brings up a bigger question. Who exactly is in control of our troops over there? If the Iraqi Prime Minister can dictate what exactly our troops do, then we don't really have full control of our own operations, do we?

This has always been a right-wing fear from back in the black helicopter militia days. Back then, they were afraid that US soldiers, under the leadership of the UN would come into America and, well I'm not exactly sure what they thought they would do, take their guns maybe? I don't know. Anyway, one of their tenets is that US troops should never, ever, ever be placed under the control of a foreign entity. That now seems to be, at least in some sense not to be the case in Iraq.

And so a US soldier gets left behind. Don't worry, just listen to Donald Rumsfeld and "relax."

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