Appreciate your admirable loyalty to Mr Rumsfeld. However, I see him as a huge failure as the Secretary of Defense. A patriotic, dedicated, intelligent, charismatic man of great experience—with a crippling sense of arrogance and hobbled by terrible instincts.

In large part, because of his mistaken decisions and micro-management of the tactical aspects of this war—we are nowstuck in a mess with 29,000 US troops killed and wounded…. with $400 billion wasted…and no good way out.

It is my view from direct dealing with the current senior leadership of this Administration… and the Congress… and the Armed Forces — that Mr Rumsfeld is viewed by many as a ruthless and mostly self-serving official who dominated the policy process to the ultimate detriment of the nation.

He claimed credit when it was not his due—- and adroitly evaded responsibility for his failures. Finally, by the end—it was my belief that he was disingenuous at best when confronted by the media for his failures.

This is as polite as I can be to characterize his deliberate denial of evidence that contradicted his public mis-statements of the facts. The new Secretary Bob Gates is going to make a serious contribution to getting us out of this dangerous situation in the short time remaining. He is brilliant and has common sense–and is an official of great integrity.

=======================================================

The Fog of Email
Combat, in all its forms, is not for the uninformed or ill-trained, no matter the degree of their enthusiasm.

Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of the Washington Post.
– Donald Rumsfeld

[Note: With some people, it’s a wonder how they ever got to be on the inside circle at the highest level of the Pentagon, especially when the boss had such pronounced mistrust of media in all its permutations. Larry DiRita is a case in point. A former high-level aide to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, DiRita became known to readers of this website when he engaged in an ill-advised battle of ideas and words with war correspondent Joe Galloway and the emails became part of the dispatch “Pen-MAN-Ship.”

At the time, DiRita was using his official government email account to provoke an argument with Joe (and then to whine about it when Joe pummeled him). Joe had written a column critical of Rumsfeld’s handling of the Iraq War and in particular with how the Pentagon had disregarded the extensive existing war plans that called for a vastly different approach to invading the country (namely, with more troops, and also through maintaining the government structures and personnel when ever possible). Back when it was first published, Joe’s column was one of the first voices to call Rumsfeld to account for obvious and costly failures in Iraq.

DiRita’s emails were in response to Joe’s steady attacks and in defense of his boss. They were also a textbook example of a guy ignoring the famous advice of British politician Dennis Healy: “when you are in a hole, stop digging.” With Joe’s permission, that email exchange was published on this site, and it got picked up and spread widely across the internet.

Earlier today when the email exchange published below was forwarded to me by General Barry McCaffrey (ret), it reinforced my original questions about how someone who can’t seem to fight keeps landing himself in the ring with undefeated champions of the written word. DiRita’s aim still exceeds his grasp—especially of detail when it comes to military analysis—as this latest exchange proves. While DiRita claims to have learned from his previous experience with Joe Galloway, he repeats the same mistakes with McCaffrey, only this time he does it with his eyes wide open. With the permission of General McCaffrey, the emails are published here.]

Original Message —–
From: BARRY MCCAFFREY
To: ldirita
Cc: Melissa Henson Associates LLC ; Joe Galloway
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 5:29 PM
Subject: Fw: yourrecent comments on rumsfeld

Larry,

Thanks for the email. Did not know you were in J5. It was a great assignment following Desert Storm combat command. Those were very challenging and rewarding duties before I went on to SOUTHCOM command.

Appreciate your admirable loyalty to Mr Rumsfeld. However, I see him as a huge failure as the Secretary of Defense. A patriotic, dedicated, intelligent, charismatic man of great experience—with a crippling sense of arrogance and hobbled by terrible instincts.

In large part, because of his mistaken decisions and micro-management of the tactical aspects of this war—we are nowstuck in a mess with 29,000 US troops killed and wounded…. with $400 billion wasted…and no good way out.

It is my view from direct dealing with the current senior leadership of this Administration… and the Congress… and the Armed Forces — that Mr Rumsfeld is viewed by many as a ruthless and mostly self-serving official who dominated the policy process to the ultimate detriment of the nation.

He claimed credit when it was not his due—- and adroitly evaded responsibility for his failures. Finally, by the end—it was my belief that he was disingenuous at best when confronted by the media for his failures.

This is as polite as I can be to characterize his deliberate denial of evidence that contradicted his public mis-statements of the facts. The new Secretary Bob Gates is going to make a serious contribution to getting us out of this dangerous situation in the short time remaining. He is brilliant and has common sense–and is an official of great integrity.

Dr Rice is no longer anchored by the constraints of Mr Rumsfeld—and now plays a pivotal role in a new aggressive public diplomacy. Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker will jointly play a creative leadership role in Iraq —minus the widely hated interference which came from Mr Rumsfeld. The White House Chief-of-staff and the National Security Advisor will now have a chance to open a dialog with Congress to possibly get some sort of bi-partisan solution to
the disaster that Mr Rumsfeld left us.

Again–I understand and respect your sense of loyalty–but I think Mr Rumsfeld’s leadership failure as the Secretary of Defense got the nation and the Armed Forces in a very dangerous position. Would also suggest that your very pointed and uncivil emails—such as the one to Joe Galloway and now me—which defend his disastrous tenure… are very much part of the public record and debate.

Appreciate the chance to respond to your views. Best wishes.

Barry McCaffrey
________________________________
From: Lawrence Di Rita
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 6:32 AM
To: BRM
Subject: your recent comments on rumsfeld

general mccaffrey–
i happened to catch you on one of the cable programs monday nite. in response to a question about whether or not condi ought to engage iran, you said that she no longer has donald rumsfeld ‘as an anchor around her neck’ and, thus, should be able to be more effective as secretary of state, or something to that effect.

that is a harsh characterization and it was quite unfair to both rumsfeld and rice. in particular, characterizing the matter as you did with respect to iran is also a non sequiter in that rumsfeld was explicit publicly and privately that iran was a diplomatic matter to be managed by the president and the secretary of state.

more generally, though, to characterize the regular interactions between two serious people dealing with serious issues as you did is, to be frank, beneath someone who has operated at the level you have operated.

rumsfeld had a job to do as secretary of defense, and i’m quite aware you may believe you would have done it differently if you were doing the job. but he did his job as best he could to support the president’s and the nation’s objectives, and he did it with considerable effect.
although he was the least parochial leader i ever served, he also was always mindful that, at times, his actions or actions of others at DoD butted up against the institutional views/priorities of other departments. still, at the level he, condi, colin powell, tenet, and the others operated, they accepted that sometimes there are bound to be those kinds of conflicts and they worked through them in a respectful and responsible fashion.

on a personal note, i served in j-5 around the same time as you and just prior to my departure from the service. i suppose it won’t shock you to know that people had views of your leadership that might diverge from how you saw yourself doing your job. still, i imagine you would find it unfair, unwarranted, and undignified to hear someone at or above your own station in life to describe your tenure using the kind of inflammatory rhetoric you
used.

i do hope you will consider what i am suggesting, and accept it in the spirit in which it is given. rumsfeld is an honorable patriot and deserves better and, whether you accept that or not, you do yourself a disservice by resorting to name calling to characterize your disagreements with his views.

finally: about a year ago i had an email exchange with joe galloway that i– stupidly, it turns out — assumed was a discussion between two people. joe was playing for the galleries, though, and released our exchange through various blogs. i had no problem with anything
anything i said, but thought it was pretty unsporting of joe to have done what he did. i mention only because i do not intend to distribute this email, or any response you may care to offer, and i suppose i should have stipulated that with galloway, too!

best…larry di rita

A French Lesson for Republicans
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 05/07/2007 ET
Updated 05/07/2007 ET

BERLIN, Germany, May 7 -- Callista and I are in Europe this week for a conference on innovation in health care. More about our trip to Berlin in a minute, but first the big news in Europe this week isn't in Germany but in France.

I know this will seem strange to those of us who like to make jokes about the French, but the fact is that there is a great deal to be learned from the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy (a member of the ruling party) in last weekend's "change" election in France -- and Republicans had better learn it.

For those of you who haven't followed it closely, here is some background on the election.

The Background: An Unpopular Incumbent President and a Desire for Change

Incumbent French President Jacques Chirac had been twice elected, has served a total of 12 years in office, and is very unpopular. Coming into this election, people were very tired of the Chirac government and there was a sense that there had to be change.

But the opposition on the left, the Socialist Party, failed completely to capitalize on this desire for change. They nominated a candidate of great achievement, Ségolène Royal, but she proved herself to be the candidate of the status quo, not the candidate of change. She was actually committed to keeping all the bureaucracies that were failing and all the policies that were creating unemployment. She was committed to avoiding the changes necessary for a French future of prosperity, opportunity and safety.

Normally, with the incumbent conservative government so unpopular, the left would have been expected to win the election, probably by a significant margin. But the conservative candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, won decisively because he is an aggressive, different kind of French political leader. He is a member of the Chirac government -- the Minister of the Interior. But not only is he a man who is willing to stand up and fight for what he believes in, but Sarkozy is also a man who hasn't followed the normal French path to success by going to an elite university, becoming part of the ruling elite and fitting in.

Sarkozy: A Different Kind of Frenchman

Instead, Sarkozy is just the opposite. He was born of Hungarian parents who had fled communism in Eastern Europe. That makes him the first president of France who is a first-generation immigrant. It also means his name doesn't sound very French. And his style certainly isn't very French. He is a tough, confrontational leader -- a man who has been preaching things that don't sound very much like the French establishment.

In the campaign, Sarkozy argued that the French have to work longer hours and, in order to give them an incentive to do so, that they shouldn't pay taxes if they work overtime. He called for tax cuts to encourage investment so the private sector can create jobs. And critically, Sarkozy has said that the people must obey the law, that the creation of law and respect for the law is a central part of any civilized society.

Remember, this is a jarring message for a country that routinely accepts the burning of up to 15,000 cars a year by hooligans who, according to the elites, are simply "expressing their desire to disrupt society." It's jarring for a country that was very proud a few years back to have the first mandatory 35-hour work week in history. Yet an increasing majority of the French believes that without the kind of changes Sarkozy is calling for, France's stature will disappear in a wave of lawlessness and economic decay.

A Royal Commitment to the Status Quo and a Candidate of Change

As for the opposition in the French election, much like the American Democratic Party, it is trapped by its commitment to big labor, big bureaucracy, high taxes and social values people don't believe in. Every time French voters seriously looked at Ségolène Royal and the kind of politics she represents, she lost ground. She simply couldn't make the case that left-wing Socialist policies would work.

The result was a surprising and powerful upset by Sarkozy -- a victory by a center-right reformer, a member of the unpopular ruling party, who came to personify change.

And here's where American Republicans really need to pay attention: In France, voting for change meant voting for the party in office, but not the personality in office. And voting to keep the old order meant voting for the opposition, not for the incumbent party.

If Republicans hope to win the presidency next year, they better find a candidate who is prepared to stand for very bold, very dramatic and very systematic change in Washington. Not only that, but they had better make the case that the left-wing Democrat likely to be nominated represents the failed status quo: the bureaucracies that are failing, the social policies that are failing, the high tax policies that are failing, and the weakness around the world that has failed so badly in protecting America.

Only if we have that kind of campaign do we have a reasonable chance to expect the American people will vote for effective change for a better, safer and more prosperous future -- and that they will see that effective change as being Republican.

A Franco-American Alliance for 'Green Conservatism'?

In the meantime, Sarkozy has pledged to repair relations between France and America, and we should take him seriously in his pledge. In particular, he has called on America to lead the world in addressing climate change.

This gives President Bush a unique opportunity to change the perception of his attitude toward both Europe and the environment. The President should take up Sarkozy's call for U.S. leadership on global warming by proposing a bold new initiative on market-based, entrepreneurial incentives to help in the environment. As I outline in an op-ed that appeared in Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, using new technology to dramatically increase energy independence and reduce reliance on carbon isn't giving in to the left -- it's resisting the big government solutions that the left routinely imposes under the guise of protecting the environment and instead finding a more effective way forward to protect and renew the natural world.

Solutions Watch

In the news here at home, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his call in a speech [video, audio] at the Citadel last week for the creation of a special force to specifically handle post-combat operations in places like Iraq.

In 1999, I served on the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century (also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) to examine our national security challenges as far out as 2025. One of the reforms we called for was the creation of a post-combat force.

In addition, I have long argued for the creation of a much larger military. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are all on record calling for a bigger army. The White House should answer their calls now. We can't wait until 2009.

Environmental Polar Opposites

While we are here in Berlin, Callista and I plan to stop by the zoo to see my namesake, Knut the polar bear. He's getting bigger these days, but you probably remember him from a few months ago when he was a cub recently abandoned by his mother. Some animal rights activists had declared that he should be put to death rather than be raised by humans. I'm going to see Knut, not only because of my great love of zoos and the natural world, but because I think he is a symbol of a growing divide on man's relationship with the environment. The activists who wanted Knut killed represent the radical view that humans are only destroyers of the natural world and that human needs and wants shall always be a distant second to the environment.

My view is that we are stewards of the natural world. We have an obligation to preserve and protect it, not only for future generations of human beings, but for all living things.

So long for now from Berlin. I'll report again next week on the launch of my new novel, Pearl Harbor, and the national security lessons it contains for America today.

Your friend,

Newt Gingrich

Kurds Cultivating Their Own Bonds With U.S.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 23, 2007; A01

The 30-second television commercial features stirring scenes of a young Iraqi boy high-fiving a U.S. soldier, a Westerner dining alfresco, and men and women dancing together. "Have you seen the other Iraq?" the narrator asks. "It's spectacular. It's joyful."

"Welcome to Iraqi Kurdistan!" the narrator continues. "It's not a dream. It's the other Iraq."

With Sunni and Shiite Arabs locked in a bloody sectarian war, Iraq's Kurds are promoting their interests through an influence-buying campaign in the United States that includes airing nationwide television advertisements, hiring powerful Washington lobbyists and playing parts of the U.S. government against each other. A former car mechanic who happens to be the son of Iraq's president is at the center of Kurdish efforts to cultivate support for their semi-independent enclave, but the cast of Kurdish proponents also includes evangelical Christians, Israeli operatives and Republican political consultants.

In the past year, the Kurds have spent more than $3 million to retain lobbyists and set up a diplomatic office in Washington. They are cultivating grass-roots advocates among supporters of President Bush's war policy and evangelicals who believe that many key figures in the Bible lived in Kurdistan. And they are seeking to build an emotional bond with ordinary Americans, like those forged by Israel and Taiwan, by running commercials on national cable news channels to assert that even as Iraq teeters toward a full-blown civil war, one corner of the country, at least, has fulfilled the Bush administration's ambition of a peaceful, democratic, pro-Western beachhead in the Middle East.

But elements of the Kurds' campaign run counter to the policy of a unified Iraq espoused by the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Some senior U.S. officials contend that yielding to Kurdish demands for increased autonomy could break up Iraq and destabilize Turkey, a NATO ally that is fighting a guerrilla war with Kurdish separatists -- some of whom have taken sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdish leaders cast their self-promotion initiative as a bulwark against attempts to restrict their federal rights. With only 40,000 or so Kurds living in the United States, Kurdish officials insist they have no choice but to pursue the dual strategy of wooing non-Kurdish constituencies and lobbying in Washington.

"We have to use all the tools at our disposal to help ourselves," said Qubad Talabani, the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, sent here as the Kurdistan Regional Government's representative in Washington.

Kurds want the sort of "strategic and institutional relationship" that Israel and Taiwan have with the United States, Talabani, 29, said. "It doesn't matter which party is in power in Washington -- the U.S. government isn't going to abandon either of those countries," he added. "We are seeking the same protection."

Talabani, a former Maserati repairman, was raised by his grandparents in Britain and moved to Washington in 2000 knowing nothing about power politics. He soon began dating -- and later married -- a State Department staffer working on Iraq policy. He wears French-cuff shirts and Windsor-knotted ties with pinstripe suits. He lunches at the Bombay Club and works two blocks from the White House.

He has more clout than any other Iraqi in Washington because of his ability to call his father directly and because he represents the collective view of an influential minority -- one that holds enough seats in Iraq's parliament to wield effective veto power over a proposed law to distribute national oil revenue to Iraqis, as well as other legislation sought by the United States. By contrast, Baghdad's ambassador to Washington is a secular Sunni Arab who has limited sway with his Shiite-dominated government.

Talabani is in regular contact with senior officials in the White House. He drops in on members of Congress, and he has met with four of the presidential candidates: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.).

"We've been on the fringes for too long," Talabani said.

Lobbying for Support
Making friends in the United States is crucial for Iraq's 5 million ethnic Kurds, most of whom live in three mountainous northern provinces that are administered by the Kurdistan Regional Government, effectively a state within a state. The regional government has the power to pass its own laws, maintain its own internal security force and even bar the entry of the Iraqi army. Iraq's national flag is nonexistent in Kurdistan -- every government building is adorned with the red, white and green Kurdish flag -- and foreign visitors who fly into Irbil, the regional capital, receive a visa to Kurdistan, not Iraq.

Although the regional government was enshrined by Iraq's constitution in 2005, it remains a point of tension with Arab Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiite, who live to the south. Sunni Arabs have argued that national reconciliation is impossible without revoking many of the concessions given to the Kurds, particularly a promise to hold a referendum this year on whether the oil-rich city of Kirkuk -- home to Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds -- will become part of Kurdistan.

The three nations that border Iraqi Kurdistan -- Turkey, Iran and Syria, all of which have significant populations of ethnic Kurds -- also remain deeply vexed by Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.

Most worrisome to Kurdish leaders, however, is their relationship with Washington. The Kurds believe they should be recognized as a certifiable success story in a war that has lasted more than four years: They're largely secular, no U.S. military personnel have been killed in Kurdistan since the March 2003 invasion, and business is booming in Irbil and other Kurdish cities because Kurdish militias, known as peshmerga, have managed to keep out Sunni Arab insurgents.

But Kurdish officials contend that the U.S. government has done little to reward these achievements. The State Department acknowledges spending 3 percent of its reconstruction funds on the Kurds since 2003, even though they make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population. Kurdish leaders also argue that U.S. diplomats have been pushing them to make concessions that would weaken the regional government in an attempt to placate Sunni Arabs.

"If they think that the Kurds are going to roll over like lame puppies, and have the power that they have earned taken away from them and given to those who have done nothing but kill Americans, then they have a shocking surprise awaiting them," Talabani said over a gin and tonic at the Hay-Adams Hotel bar. "We exist on the map, whether they like it or not."

The Kurds' lobbying activities in the post-Saddam Hussein era began with a quest for $4 billion.

Kurdish leaders believed they were owed at least that much from the United Nations' corruption-tainted oil-for-food program, which regulated the sale of Iraqi oil from 1995 to 2003. Because the money was transferred to a trust fund controlled by the United States shortly after the invasion, the Kurds set their sights on Washington.

Back then, the two principal Kurdish political organizations -- Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- had separate representatives in Washington. Talabani's man was Barham Salih, who now is Iraq's deputy prime minister and who became Qubad Talabani's mentor.

The task of chasing down the money, however, fell to Barzani's representative, Farhad Barzani.

Seeking help to navigate Washington, Farhad Barzani turned to Danny Yatom, a former director of Israel's spy service, the Mossad, according to senior Kurdish officials and former U.S. government officials familiar with the Kurds' efforts. Yatom's business partner, Shlomi Michaels, who was looking for investments in Kurdistan, agreed to help the Kurds find a lobbyist, the officials said. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Michaels initially sought out Jack Abramoff, then a powerful Republican-connected lobbyist, the officials said. But Abramoff, who was later convicted of bribery and is now in prison, asked for more than the Kurds wanted to pay, the officials said. One American lobbyist said Abramoff wanted the Kurds to pay him $65,000 a month. Michaels did not respond to several phone messages.

Russell Wilson, a former Republican congressional staff member whom Michaels asked for advice, eventually suggested that the Kurds contact Ed Rogers, a GOP political operative and former White House official who runs one of Washington's most influential lobbying firms. On June 3, 2004, Barbour Griffith & Rogers agreed to represent the Kurdistan Democratic Party for $29,000 a month.

Qubad Talabani said the firm lobbied the White House for the $4 billion.

Twenty days later, on June 23, the U.S. occupation administration in Iraq gave the Kurds $1.4 billion in cash. The U.S. military flew the money -- brand-new $100 bills in shrink-wrapped bricks -- to Irbil on three helicopters.

Although officials with the occupation authority maintained that the payout was the Kurds' share of Iraq's 2004 capital budget and was unconnected to lobbying, Kurdish leaders insist otherwise.

Barbour, Griffith & Rogers's business with the Kurds has since steadily expanded. The Kurdistan Regional Government paid the firm $869,333 for work performed in the first 11 months of last year, according to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Justice Department.

The firm's lobbying was "very helpful in getting us the oil-for-food money," said Talabani, who now represents both Kurdish parties. "It was a tangible victory for the Kurds."

A Friend in Commerce
Next up was an even bigger prize: the $18.4 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds flowing into Iraq. As with the oil-for-food money, Kurdish leaders believed they deserved at least 20 percent -- their perceived fair share based on Kurds' proportion of Iraq's population.

The State Department had a different view. Kurdistan had been protected from Hussein's army since 1991 by U.S. warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone, and had enjoyed far greater development in the intervening years than Arab-dominated parts of Iraq. Despite Kurdish pleas and vigorous lobbying, the department decided that the vast majority of the reconstruction funds would go elsewhere.

By 2005, Kurdish leaders decided to shift their strategy. Kurdistan was becoming an increasingly popular destination for businessmen who deemed Baghdad too dangerous for visiting or for investment. Rather than argue about aid, the Kurds proposed that the U.S. government encourage American investment in Kurdistan.

Talabani and Ayal Frank, a former congressional staffer and legislative analyst for the Israeli Embassy who was hired as a lobbyist by the Kurdistan Regional Government, sidestepped the State Department in favor of the Commerce Department, which they considered more receptive. "If a door shuts on you," Talabani said, "you go in through the window." After several meetings with Commerce's Iraq task force, Talabani added, "common sense prevailed."

"In some quarters at State, there's this zero-sum view: that helping the Kurds means you're hurting the Arabs," he said. "People at Commerce had a different view. They started to realize that developing safer parts of the country is not detrimental to the rest of the country."

Multiple meetings, phone calls and e-mails paid off on Feb. 20 of this year, when Franklin L. Lavin, the undersecretary of commerce for international trade, traveled to Irbil to promote Kurdistan as a "gateway" for U.S. business in Iraq. Lavin said his visit was designed "to encourage companies that are looking at Iraq . . . to think about particular locales that might be more fruitful environments for starting a business."

Talabani said he considers Lavin's trip a "big success" because it involved a Cabinet agency "reassessing the way it views doing business in Iraq."

But for Talabani and other Kurdish officials, a major barrier to U.S. investment remains: the State Department's travel warning for Iraq, which cautions that the country is "very dangerous," without distinguishing one region from another.

Talabani has urged the department to change the warning, which he said "tells the potential businessman that all of Iraq is unsafe, and that's not true." Although foreign investment is pouring into Kurdistan, very little is from large U.S. corporations, he added.

Lavin declined to comment on the matter, but Kurdish officials said he has also pressed the State Department to amend the warning.

In an April 3 letter to Talabani, Maura Harty, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said the warning "accurately reflects the current situation" in Iraq.

Talabani said he plans to urge members of Congress and business executives to petition the State Department.

"We're going to keep up the pressure," he said.

The Minister and the TV Crew
As the Washington campaign unfolded, the other component of the Kurds' influence-building strategy was taking shape three blocks from the beach in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Bill Garaway, an evangelical Christian minister, realized that the Kurds had a public-relations problem when he told his neighbors in the seaside town that he was performing missionary work in Kurdistan.

"They said, 'Who are the Kurds?' " recalled Garaway. "I said, 'There is nobody like them in the Middle East. They're Muslim, but they hate fundamentalist Islam. They love America.' "

On a trip to Iraq in late 2004, he pitched the idea of airing commercials touting Kurdistan in the United States. The Kurds were intrigued. They told Garaway to produce a few spots.

He began filming in early 2005, with a camera crew that captured children waving flags, shoppers strolling through a new mall and peshmerga soldiers saluting. By the end of the summer, he had created three 30-second commercials.

The first, in which a succession of Kurds look into the camera and thank the United States, aired last summer on cable news stations. It generated immediate buzz.

"Seeing Iraqis say 'thank you' was very powerful," Garaway said. "It's not something most Americans had heard before."

Garaway, a rangy 62-year-old with receding silver hair, became enamored with the Kurds more than a decade ago, after concluding that many key events described in the Bible occurred in Kurdistan, including the stories of Noah's ark and Queen Esther. He believes not only that the Kurds are descendants of the ancient Medes people, but also that the three wise men who the Bible says visited baby Jesus in Bethlehem came from Kurdistan.

For Garaway, championing the Kurdish cause has been the latest twist in a life filled with unexpected turns. As he tells it, he protested the Vietnam War as a college student, burning his draft card at a UCLA rally in 1967. He subsequently lived in a commune with 140 others in the hills above Palo Alto, Calif., where he ran a food cooperative, taught yoga, befriended members of the Grateful Dead and hosted poet Allen Ginsberg in his treehouse. One day, a group of friends who had left the commune returned and invited Garaway to join their church. He did, and soon after, he said, "God revealed himself to me."

He and his wife settled in Santa Cruz in the early 1970s, where they opened a church, started to surf and began to raise a family. They had six children, all of whom were home-schooled. Four have become professional surfers.

Garaway, who has served as the president of a Christian aid organization operating in northern Iraq, said the Kurds should have an independent homeland -- a view that goes well beyond the stated positions of Qubad Talabani and other Kurdish leaders.

"There's more of the best American values in Kurdistan than anywhere else in the Islamic world," he said. "We should be encouraging them, not standing in their way."

Garaway enlisted Russo Marsh & Rogers, a Republican-oriented political consulting firm in Sacramento, to place the commercials. The firm is closely affiliated with Move America Forward, a conservative advocacy group that has organized rallies in support of continuing military operations in Iraq. Last year, the group invited the director of the Kurdistan Development Corporation, which coordinated payment for the commercials, to speak at a luncheon in San Francisco featuring parents of military personnel who had died in Iraq.

Move America Forward also organized a trip for the parents to visit Kurdistan, where they met with Massoud Barzani and other prominent Kurds. Garaway said he and Salvatore Russo, the chief strategist of Russo Marsh & Rogers, arranged to be there at the same time.

The parents are now "some of the strongest supporters of the Kurds," Russo said. "For them, it's a validation that their child didn't die in vain."

After the trip, Move America Forward and the parents issued a report calling for "developing and maintaining a major U.S. military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan" -- a key goal of Kurdish leaders.

Now Garaway hopes to take his national campaign on behalf of Kurdistan to "the next level" with an influential Washington partner: the mechanic-turned-lobbyist Qubad Talabani. Garaway has encouraged Talabani and other Kurdish leaders to spend several million dollars this year to run all three commercials on prime-time network television. "If more of the American public sees these spots, we can have a more rational approach to dealing with the war," he said.

Getting Americans "to understand our story," Talabani agreed, is essential for the Kurds.

"We have a real story of the resilience of the underdog, that shares the values of America, that is succeeding," he added. "It's not unlike the American dream."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

The far-too-successful nation-building that is Kurdistan

ARTICLE: "A Separate Peace: Kurds are cultivating their own bonds with the United States," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 April-6 May 2007, p. 7
Enterra just sent over its first personnel to Kurdistan on its first Development-in-a-Box contract with the US Government. All one can ask for is an incentivized target and the Kurds are definitely that.

Kurdistan markets itself like pork: the "other white meat."

The 30-second television commercial features stirring scenes of a young Iraqi boy high-fiving a U.S. soldier, a Westerner dining alfresco, and men and women dancing together. "Have you seen the other Iraq?" the narrator asks. "It's spectacular. It's joyful."
"Welcome to Iraqi Kurdistan," the narrator continues. "It's not a dream. It's the other Iraq.".

Slick as s--t, no?

You gotta love this sort of democracy in action:

With Sunni and Shiite Arabs locked in a bloody sectarian war, Iraq's Kurds are promoting their interests through an influence-buying campaign in the United States that includes airing nationwide television advertisements, hiring powerful Washington lobbyists and playing parts of the U.S. government against one another.
Their model for a strategic and institutional relationship with the U.S.: Israel and Taiwan.

Now that's brilliant.

Think about it: protection despite lacking certain international recognition.

The Kurds believe they should be recognized as a certifiable success story in a war that has lasted more than four years. They're largely secular, no U.S. military personnel have been killed in Kurdistan since the March 2003 invasion, and business is booming in Irbil and other Kurdish cities because Kurdish militias, known as peshmerga, have managed to keep out Sunni Arab insurgents.
Yugoslavia didn't fall into place in a day. It did so in sequential chunks. Recognizing Kurdistan-the-success is crucial to keeping the Big Bang sequential instead of cumulative.

Take what the board gives you, I say.

And pull most U.S. troops eventually back to Kurdistan. Don't leave Iraq, but stay where you're welcome and accept a certain commute for certain necessary activities.

Grow some lawn and stop only killing weeds. Then let others see where the grass is greener.

Demonstration effects make globalization go round

April 28, 2007
Overture to an Untapped Market; Advertisers Rewrite the Rules for Reaching Muslims

By LOUISE STORY
For years, few advertisers in the United States have dared to reach out to Muslims.

Either they did not see much potential for sales or they feared a political backlash. And there were practical reasons: American Muslims come from so many ethnic backgrounds that their only common ground is their religion, a subject most marketers avoid.

That is beginning to change. Consumer companies and advertising executives are focusing on ways to use the cultural aspects of the Muslim religion to help sell their products.

Grocers and consumer product companies are considering ways to adapt their goods to Muslim rules, which forbid among other things, gelatin and pig fat, which is often used in cosmetics and cleaning products. Retailers are looking into providing more conservative skirts, even during the summer months, and mainstream advertisers are planning to place some commercials on the satellite channels that Muslims often watch.

Marketing to Muslims carries some risks. But advertising executives, used to dividing American consumers into every sort of category, say that ignoring this group -- estimated to be about five million to eight million people, and growing fast -- would be like missing the Hispanic market in the 1990s.

''I think Muslims have had to draw into themselves,'' said Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of JWT, a large advertising agency in the WPP Group that plans to encourage clients like Johnson & Johnson and Unilever to market to American Muslims. ''It puts an increased burden on a marketer post-9/11 to say, 'Look, we understand.' ''

Companies in the Detroit area, where there is a dense population of Muslims, are leading the change. A McDonald's there serves halal Chicken McNuggets; Walgreens has Arabic signs in its aisles. And now, Ikea, which recently opened a store in the suburb of Canton, Mich., that has had trouble attracting as many Muslim customers as it had hoped, has been touring local homes and talking to Muslims to figure out their needs.

The store there plans to sell decorations for Ramadan next fall and is adding halal meat to its restaurant menu, or meat that is prepared according to Islamic law. Catalogs in Arabic are being planned, and female Muslim employees are expected to be given an Ikea-branded hijab, to wear over their head if they wish.

Marketing to Muslims is, of course, mostly intended to increase sales, but advertising has also long been a mirror of changes in society.

Ms. Salzman pointed to ads in the 1960s that featured Jewish products like Levy's rye bread, which, she said, helped bring that group more into mainstream advertising. She also noted that ads from companies like McDonald's in the early 1990s portrayed busy mothers who admitted that they did not cook every night like their mothers did.

''Marketers have actually helped us to rewrite the rules about what we're comfortable with,'' she said.

Because the Census Bureau does not ask about religion, there is no authoritative count of Muslims in America. Some Muslim organizations provide estimates as high as 10 million. Others say it could be as low as three million.

Whatever the number, many Muslims have clustered in areas that include Orange County, Calif.; Houston; the state of Georgia; northern Virginia; New York City and Long Island; and the Detroit area.

Over the last few months, JWT conducted a large study of Muslims in the United States and Britain to determine whether they would be receptive to specialized advertising. There were 835 people in the United States study. Muslim Americans spend about $170 billion on consumer products, JWT estimates; this figure is expected to grow rapidly as the population expands and younger Muslims build careers.

Ms. Salzman said the study found that Muslims were buying many standard products but that they felt excluded from mainstream advertising. In particular, she said, they wanted companies to recognize their holidays.

Ms. Salzman said JWT had little trouble surveying Muslims in Britain, but found it had to clarify at the start of each phone call in the United States that it was not calling from a government agency.

Over the next few weeks, JWT plans to reach out to the chief executives of all of its major clients, including JetBlue, the Ford Motor Company and HSBC, to encourage them to market to Muslims in the United States and Britain.

''These advertisers have been in the Middle East and in the Far East Muslim countries for decades, so they're already dealing with the Muslim market,'' said Tayyibah Taylor, publisher and editor in chief of Azizah magazine, a Muslim-focused magazine in Atlanta. ''They just haven't been dealing with the Muslim marketer here at home.''

Almas Abbasi, a radiologist in Long Island who was one of the people interviewed by JWT, said she would be grateful for advertising that included Muslims.

''If Ramadan starts, and you see an ad in the newspaper saying, 'Happy Ramadan, here's a special in our store,' everyone will run to that store,'' she said.

Her daughter, Shaheen Magsi, a senior at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, N.Y., said her family turned off their cable television three years ago after seeing too many negative stereotypes about Muslims. She said she quickly grew tired of telling people at school that, no, she did not agree with Osama bin Laden.

''It'd be really good to say, 'Oh, there's a Muslim on TV, and they're portraying something good other than Muslims killing people,' '' she said.

Just what approach companies should take to reach Muslims is far from clear. The market is diverse, including African-Americans, South Asians, Caucasians and people from the Middle East, as well as people who are more or less conservative in their religious views. American Muslims disagree about whether the Muslim women in ads should wear the hijab, for instance.

Nationwide Financial Services has already been advertising to people from Pakistan and India, who are often Muslim. But it prefers to focus on their country of origin, said Tariq Khan, Nationwide's vice president of market development and diversity.

Still, religion is culturally relevant at times, he said, and Nationwide may run ads in print publications in June that feature Hindu and Muslim weddings.

Rizwan Jamil, director of beverages at Unilever in Pakistan, said Unilever often ran promotions there for Lipton tea and custard powders during Muslim holidays, using bright and festive packaging, and discounts. These sorts of gestures would appeal to a broad swath of Muslims in the United States, he said, without setting off discussions about religion.

''It's just like when you're advertising something for Christmas,'' Mr. Jamil said. ''You're not talking about Christians or Christianity. You're talking about Christmas, the event. I would be careful -- to the extent that I used religion. I wouldn't shout it out. I wouldn't shout out to the world that 'I'm talking to Muslims.' ''

There is a genuine fear about how to market to Muslims -- and whether to do so -- at many big companies, executives at Muslim-focused media outlets and organizations said.

''United States companies don't want to risk alienating their domestic consumers,'' said Nasser Beydoun, chairman of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn, Mich., which is working with Ikea, Wal-Mart and Comcast to develop strategies to reach Muslim consumers. Other companies like Frito-Lay and Kodak have recently considered marketing to Muslims.

Publishers of Muslim women's magazines, like Azizah andMuslim Girl Magazine, said they had to dispel advertisers' concerns that they would feature articles that were radical or political.

Bridges TV, a cable and satellite network, has changed its sales pitch to make advertisers more comfortable. When it was introduced in 2004, Bridges TV presented itself as a Muslim television network, but lately the network has been having better luck labeling itself as ''bridging the West and East,'' said Mohamed Numan-Ali, the network's advertising manager. Brands like Ford, Lunesta and Lincoln have signed on as advertisers, he said.

On the other hand, some Muslim-focused media companies that are courting advertisers highlight religion as their strength. Executives at QTV, a new satellite network centered around the Koran, tell advertisers that the focus on religion is what keeps its viewers tuning in, often five times a day for prayer calls.

Companies that advertise on QTV should not worry about backlash, said Mahmood Ahmad, president of Digital Broadcasting Network Inc., which produces QTV, because ''Fox News viewers are not watching QTV anyway.'' He added, ''QTV is the safest place to be because they won't know.''

Advertising on satellite channels popular with Muslims and in the publications that focus on them would be inexpensive compared with mainstream media and might be highly effective because so few companies reach out to this group.

''People would flock to it,'' said Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a nonprofit group based in New York. ''They would say 'I can't believe I'm being validated by Macy's. I can't believe I'm being validated by Whole Foods.' ''

Even in mainstream advertising, companies may win over customers by including Muslims in some ads, said Razaq Baloch, a partner in Spicy Banana, an ad agency specializing in reaching customers from India and Pakistan.

Alia Fouz, a Palestinian-American who lives near the Ikea in Canton, said she never felt that ads were addressing her as a Muslim when she was growing up in Virginia. Sitting in the Ikea snack bar with her young son, she said ads that included American Muslims would grab her -- and her son's -- attention.

''We should be included,'' Ms. Fouz said. ''We live here.''