McCain and Sche­une­mann dur­ing the campaign

Kudos to TPM­Muck­raker for look­ing into [Randy Scheunemann’s record on Iraq](http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/mccain_advisors_horrifying_ira.php). Sche­une­mann is Sen. John McCain’s chief for­eign pol­icy strate­gist and a spokesman, but he’s also part of the Project for the New Amer­i­can Cen­tury, helped draft the let­ter mak­ing regime change on Iraq offi­cial U.S. pol­icy after 1998, a man who saw WMDs under every Iraqi rock and peb­ble and, per­haps most damn­ingly, a backer of Ahmad Cha­l­abi, [who did a pretty good job of snook­er­ing the U.S. into invad­ing Iraq](http://www.back-to-iraq.com/2004/02/chalabi-to-us-thanks-suckers.php).

To me, all of Scheunemann’s sins pale com­pared to his back­ing of Cha­l­abi, a man who not only lied to get the U.S. to take down his neme­sis, Sad­dam Hus­sein, but might also have given infor­ma­tion to the Ira­ni­ans that [Amer­ica had cracked their codes](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E4DE1431F931A35755C0A9629C8B63). Cha­l­abi denies any wrong doing.

Josh Mar­shall and his team com­plain that the main­stream media (what­ever that is these days) have ignored or glossed over Scheunemann’s appalling track record. Usu­ally, when a blog com­plains about this, it’s hooey, but a quick [Google News search](http://www.google.com/news?q=scheunemann%20chalabi) comes up with no major cov­er­age of his past errors in judg­ment. And since this cam­paign seems to be focus­ing on the very per­ti­nent ques­tion of who has the bet­ter judg­ment on Iraq, this seems a valid press inquiry. And if [Obama is going to take heat for his advisors](http://www.google.com/search?sa=N&tab=nw&q=obama%20powers), shouldn’t McCain’s be under sim­i­lar scrutiny?

[](http://​pew​global​.org/​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​d​i​s​p​l​a​y​.​p​h​p​?​R​e​p​o​r​t​I​D​=​260)Bret Stephens, a reg­u­lar colum­nist for the *Journal*‘s op-ed page, finds four American-installed lead­ers in Iraq who back McCain. Imag­ine that. He then takes these four guys’ views and extrap­o­lates them to include all Iraqis. And while he men­tions a Pew poll that shows [the over­whelm­ing major­ity of the world sup­ports Sen. Barack Obama](http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=260), he notes that the poll skips Iraq. And he adds that he did no polling of his own. But speak­ing to four guys allows him to state: “Iraq, all but alone among the nations, will be pray­ing for a McCain vic­tory on the first Tues­day in November.”

This col­umn is so silly it’s barely worth men­tion­ing, espe­cially because there are dozens of polls that have been taken over the years that show Iraqis over­whelm­ingly despise the Amer­i­can pres­ence and most of them want the troops out. (This is not to say that *all* Iraqis want the Amer­i­cans to leave. I’m very aware some want the troops to stick around.)

Any­way, two can play at this game. Accord­ing to a Face­book poll I found using a sim­ple Google search, 62% of Iraqis pre­fer Obama as pres­i­dent. Now, obvi­ously, my “research” is about as sci­en­tific at Stephens’s. Which is to say, not at all. But then, I’m not des­per­ately try­ing to preach to the choir.

DUBAI — Greet­ings all… As is obvi­ous, I’ve not been writ­ing much. There are some good rea­sons for that. First and fore­most, I’ve been busy. Since Novem­ber of last year, I’ve

• Got­ten married
• Moved to Dubai
• Taken on a new job
• And started a new phase in my career.

Mar­ried life is great, and very com­fort­able. Mrs. Back-to-Iraq seems to like it, too, but to be hon­est, I got the bet­ter end of the deal. (That’s usu­ally the case, no?)
Dubai is less com­fort­able. It’s a strange place, an odd cross between Sin­ga­pore and Las Vegas with­out the former’s clean effi­ciency and the latter’s cheer­ful and unapolo­getic sin­ful­ness. Its love of bureau­cracy, lack of any con­cept of cus­tomer ser­vice and no real plan­ning makes it much less of an ideal place than peo­ple should believe. It’s also damn expen­sive, and the era of good liv­ing, cheap hous­ing and fat salaries is long over.

But the new job is a good one. I’m edit­ing [Trends Magazine](http://www.trendsmagazine.net), one of the region’s top busi­ness and polit­i­cal mag­a­zines, if I do say so myself. My bosses are really devoted to the idea of jour­nal­ism — a rar­ity in this part of the world — and are will­ing to take on big pow­ers here, like real estate com­pa­nies. (They’re all con­nected to the gov­ern­ment, which has any num­ber of vaguely defined “red lines” that jour­nal­ists cross — or even approach — at risk to their jobs and res­i­dency visas.)
But the big news is that I actu­ally won’t be stay­ing here. I’ve been awarded the [Knight Stan­ford Fellowship](http://knight.stanford.edu/), one of America’s big jour­nal­ism fel­low­ships, to go study the fea­si­bil­ity of var­i­ous busi­ness mod­els for online news. I plan to con­cen­trate on for­eign cor­re­spon­dence, nat­u­rally. Back​-to​-Iraq​.com was a big part of get­ting me into the fel­low­ship and I look for­ward to nine months at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity with excite­ment and humility.

So my four years in the Mid­dle East seem to be com­ing to an end, for now. I’ll be back in Dubai in July 2009, armed with expe­ri­ence, con­tacts and new lan­guage skills. Let’s hope Back-to-Iraq can be revi­tal­ized with the experience.

DUBAI — Just a few thoughts and obser­va­tions from the Vegas-meets-Singapore hotspot on the Gulf:

Tom Van­den Brook of *USA Today* writes yet another story for his grow­ing clip col­lec­tion on [MRAPs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_(armored_vehicle)), those big, expen­sive and life­sav­ing armored vehi­cles used by Marines in Anbar. The news in this story? Defense Sec­re­tary Robert M. Gates says they’re great. Seri­ously. Four hun­dred words for what should have been a sin­gle sen­tence in another story. Please stop, Tom. The Pulitzers [have already been announced](http://www.pulitzer.org/). You didn’t win.

Mean­while, in Lebanon, I’ve heard from friends that Beirut is calm but tense. (I’m not there any­more so I can’t really report too eas­ily.) March 14 is increas­ingly dispir­ited and hop­ing for a response from the world greater than sim­ple con­dem­na­tion. The SSNP has taken over Hamra, which is bizarre. And what’s up with Hezbol­lah advanc­ing on the Chouf? And then whin­ing when two of their fight­ers get taken by the Druze? You don’t mess with the Druze, man. And if you invade someone’s ter­ri­tory — and let’s be hon­est, that’s what’s going on — you’re bound to take some casu­al­ties. Hezbol­lah can’t have it both ways.

Some of the Lebanese blogs I’ve started read­ing are [From Beirut To the Beltway](http://www.beirutbeltway.com/beirutbeltway/), [Lebanese Polit­i­cal Journal](http://lebop.blogspot.com/) and [The Beirut Spring](http://beirutspring.com/blog). These are solidly March 14 blogs and the authors hold polit­i­cal views I don’t nec­es­sar­ily agree with, but at least there’s some on-the-ground post­ings going on.