Word: sofas
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Crossing the bay, the wetlands are dotted with a sofa here, a plastic garbage can there and suddenly along the causeway, a flotilla of beached, battered boats appears, awkwardly stuck in the median, wedged against highway signs, land-bound, askew and sad. Capturing the wholesale destruction of a hurricane is difficult. We learned that with Hurricane Katrina where the images, no matter how awful, were insufficient measured against the reality. The most overpowering sensation is the smell, a stench that seems to imprint itself on the brain's memory bank, suddenly wafting back hours after you have left the scene...
...Maliki, as ever, is building his own influence through his ability to perform a delicate balancing act between the contending forces on the ground - and, irksome as the fact may be to Washington, Iran is increasingly influential in post-Saddam Iraq. Al-Maliki's pushback against Washington in the SOFA talks is widely seen as in part a response to intense pressure from Tehran...
...against Washington on the terms of a security pact that will govern the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq after their current U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. With the clock ticking on a Bush Administration that is keen to finalize a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) before the expiration of the U.N. mandate - and its own - al-Maliki is holding out for the U.S. to back down from its demands for legal immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq and for their right to arrest and detain Iraqis...
...Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Haj Hammoud - the lead negotiator on the SOFA talks until al-Maliki recently took over - is confident the Iraqis will get their way. Already, says Hammoud, the U.S. has conceded that private security contractors working with the U.S. military and embassy staff will no longer enjoy immunity. But even if the Americans hold firm on the final two sticking points (which is likely) al-Maliki can grudgingly approve the deal and still ultimately get his way. That's because the agreement must be ratified by the Iraqi parliament, which is unlikely to occur without...
...when TIME's James Carney and Michael Scherer were invited to the front of McCain's plane recently for an interview, they were ushered forward, past the curtain that now separates reporters from the candidate, past the sofa that was designed for his gabfests with the press and taken straight to the candidate's seat. McCain at first seemed happy enough to do the interview. But his mood quickly soured. The McCain on display in the 24-minute interview was prickly, at times abrasive, and determined not to stray off message. An excerpt...