DC Awakening

"I spent this morning in a very small meeting with a visiting delegation of about a dozen tribal leaders from Iraq, including a number of well-known leaders of the Awakening movement. It was a fascinating meeting, in many ways, if somewhat frustrating. My long-standing skepticism about the Awakenings is no secret. Nor is my more recent advocacy that at this point they need to get integrated into the Iraqi military. So I was quite keen to hear what they had to say on this trip to Washington DC - their second, from what I was told, including a visit with President Bush - and to probe their current thinking.

I wouldn't have written about such a private meeting on the blog, except that I received explicit permission from both organizers and from the delegation to write about the general contents of the discussion (I'll not mention specific names, though who was not here was in a way as interesting as who was). It's interesting that they are here, and they clearly want interaction with Americans and to get their views heard here. And as with the visiting Iraqi Parliamentarians who spoke against the US-Iraq security agreement before Congress yesterday (covered so ably by Spencer Ackerman), it's important that Americans are exposed to a wider range than usual of Iraqi voices."
Abu Aardvark