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Cheney Visits Iraq

BAGHDAD – AP- [1]U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney opened a new U.S. push for political unity in Iraq on an unannounced visit Monday, just ahead of the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.Cheney landed at Baghdad International Airport, then flew by helicopter into the dusty, heavily secured Green Zone for talks with U.S. military and diplomatic officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It is Cheney’s third vice presidential trip to Iraq where 160,000 American troops are deployed and the U.S. death toll is nearing 4,000.

Cheney’s first meeting was a classified briefing with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq who met him at the airport. Crocker and Petraeus are scheduled to travel to Washington next month to give a status report on the war.

Not too much a shock that he went, given he was supposed to be in the area, anyway:

 Oman was scheduled to be the first stop on Cheney’s 10-day trip to the Mideast, but on Sunday night, he left Air Force Two parked on a tarmac in England and boarded a C-17 for the final five and a half hours of the 13-hour flight to the Iraqi capital.

I expect also, that this is timed to mesh with John McCain’s visit, somehow. You remember, the one they didn’t tell you about. [2]