Allawi's no Frenchman

Rep. Spencer Bachus
US House of Representatives

Dear Rep. Bachus,

There are many who would call you a hypocrite for remaining silent while our troops are taking orders from Ayad Allawi, the Prime Minister of Iraq. They'd point to the comments you made five years ago when you opposed putting our troops in Kosovo under foreign command.

At that time you said:

I am opposed to sending U.S. troops to Kosovo. There is no vital American interest at stake and we've already stretched our troops thin around the world. We should completely avoid committing our troops to yet another open-ended deployment in the Balkans...But, if our troops go they should at least be under American command.

What these potential detractors do not understand is that the Kosovo deployment was a completely different situation than the one we now face in Iraq. That intervention was a NATO operation. That means that our troops could have been placed under the command of Europeans--perhaps even the Germans or, God forbid, the French.

That's not a concern in Iraq. Our troops are under the command of Allawi, the cousin of Our Leaders very close friend, Ahmad Chalabi. Certainly, we can trust him as much we trusted his cousin.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot