Flexing Muscle, Baghdad Detains U.S. Contractors

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/world/middleeast/asserting-its-sovereignty-iraq-detains-american-contractors.html?hp

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 7:16 AM
Subject: re: Flexing Muscle, Baghdad Detains U.S. Contractors
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  It was inevitable when president Obama took office that there would be disappointment; too many people had heaped too many disparate expectations on his shoulders.  Many in this country are now whining ineffectually that he hasn't delivered the promised change. Indeed he has continued Dick Cheney's program of gutting our constitution and gathering all powers into the presidential fist.  President al-Maliki of Iraq however is holding president Obama to his word. He means to see that American military forces--not just our uniformed troops--are out of Iraq.  We can doubt president al-Maliki's motives and we can dread the Iraqi sectarian war that is already gathering momentum. But today we applaud someone who takes president Obama's words more seriously than he does himself.

Barry Haskell Levine