Cafferty: Iraq contractors abducted because of mid-term election's "doubt"

[NYCGirl]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/17/cnns-cafferty-iraq-cont_n_34337.html

Excerpted from transcript of CNN's The Situation Room, November 16, 2006:

BLITZER: Abbi, thanks very much. Let's turn to Jack Cafferty. He's in New York. You know Jack, just thinking of this story, these convoys that go back and forth from Kuwait where so many of the supplies come in to go up to Iraq, when I was there last year, I discovered, you know there may be 140, 145,000 U.S. troops right in Iraq, but there are thousands of others in northern Kuwait and maybe eight, 10,000 others and a lot of them 20 days out of the month, they are in those convoys driving back and forth, although they are not formally listed as being deployed to Iraq. They are in Kuwait. But they spend most of their time in those convoys, which are so, so dangerous as exemplified by the breaking news we're getting right now.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Well on the point that Michael Ware was making. That the people who are fomenting this kind of activity over there aren't stupid. They understand with the results of the U.S. midterm elections that there are a lot of unanswered questions in this country about what happens next. And they are going to use that opportunity to make hay while the sun shines if you pardon a kind of poor play on words. But our uncertainty and lack of direction at this moment simply creates another opportunity for the bad guys and they are taking full advantage of it.

[teriyaki jones]

1. And he's not even on Fox

So is this really the new meme?

tj

[NYCGirl]

3. Looks like it is. NT

[originalpckelly]

2. I've watched Jack for a long time, he is by no means a rightwinger...

he even called Rummy a war criminal, though CNN made him recant later.

[Cocoa]

4. it was Michael Ware that suggested that

if it was just Cafferty, I would say he's just talking out of his ass, but it actually comes from Ware, who I think knows his stuff (though I would never unquestioningly believe everything he says).

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/16/sitroom.03.html

<snip>

BLITZER: And Michael, even as the tension, the tense -- the tension level in Iraq is sky high right now, potentially it could get a whole lot worse in the coming days with word now that the Iraqi interior ministry has issued a warrant for the arrest of a top Iraqi Sunni leader. What's going on, on that front?

WARE: Well, what we know is that this evening the ministry of interior announced that it issued this arrest warrant for this leading Sunni cleric. Now he may not speak for all Sunnis in Iraq, but certainly most of that community will see this as an attack on them more broadly. Now what generally is happening is that we're seeing this predominantly Shia-led government, and this is a government that has buried deep within it many, many of these militia elements. We're seeing it going on the offensive.

It clearly thinks elements within this government that now is the time, during this period of strategic uncertainty in the U.S. following the midterm elections, there is a U.S. soldier missing who was, according to the U.S. military, abducted in the lead-up to the midterms. Now U.S. military intelligence sources say all investigative channels point to a Shia militia. Now we're seeing this in the south in a Shia militia controlled area. It certainly begs a lot of questions about what's going on strategically here -- Wolf.

[notadmblnd]

5. I imagine there are people on both sides who have an interest in keping this conflict going.

there's money to be made on both sides.