Google "9th Meeting of Foreign Ministers of Iraqi Neighboring States" and you'll be rewarded with 195,000 entries. Scanning the first 50 or so entries, you'll find that almost all the references to that meeting, held July 8-9 in Tehran, to be from Iranian or Arab news sources. (9th meeting? What happened in the other eight?)
One supposes that Americans, or at least the American media, have scant interest in what the Islamic countries in Iraq's neighborhood think about or are willing to do about Iraq's problems. (Or maybe we were as preoccupied with the World Cup this weekend as France and Italy were.) After all, to paraphrase Colin Powell, we broke it so we own it, and we don't want a bunch of Muslims getting together to talk about our newest possession, do we? The Bush administration may still believe in the grand plan for Iraq and the Middle East, and they may still even believe they can glue the broken possession back together again, but most Americans have moved way past those delusions. And those Americans might have been interested to know a little more about what these neighboring states had to say, and whether any interesting proposals were put forth. (One was that all occupying forces should leave the country. Maybe the Bush administration should take them up on that, leaving the neighboring states to take over dealing with Iraq's problems.)
Oh well.
Comments for this entry are currently under maintenance but will be restored soon.