appendage

* the NYT offers us another one of those 'appended' articles that i find weird - ya know the ones where there is an entire piece almost hidden below another piece.

heres the separate article, in its entirety:

Leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee have urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to seek a formal invitation from the new Iraqi government for American troops to remain until domestic security forces are capable of fully defending their country.
A letter on April 18 from Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican committee chairman, and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat, argued that the initiative could "substantially reduce the daily threats to U.S., coalition and Iraqi security forces."

i usually wonder if these appended articles are trying to hide something (but they cant ignore the story entirely, for one reason or other) this appears to be another example of the same - it looks as though this story has been hushed for some reason.

id have generally thought that the Senate Armed Services Committee urging Rice to do something specific to "substantially reduce the daily threats to U.S., coalition and Iraqi security forces" is newsworthy to some extent, yet the nyt only mentioned it in passing, in a 2 para 'article' (of sorts).

in fact, a news.google can only provide 6 references of the letter at all. 4 copies of the nyt article in the Wilmington Morning Star, Spartanburg Herald Journal, The Ledger and the Kurdistan Observer (altho not the original article in the nyt), and 2 international articles(oz & india) where we actually get some more information and a longer quote:

That could facilitate a greater willingness by the Iraqi people to provide information about the insurgents in their midst and could result in a substantial decrease in the deaths and injuries among Iraqis and U.S. and coalition forces.

apparently a plan to save us all from more death and destruction isnt news...

even more oddly, i cant even find the letter - its not on warners site, its sposed to be here on Levin's site - but i get a 'not found' message when i tried to download the pdf...

the letter was dated monday the 18th, but wasnt released till friday for some reason. i dont know if that is standard practice - i dont think so. it's hard to imagine that it was to give her time to respond - i'm not sure she is home yet, and besides, they sent it knowing that she was away...

i dont know what it means. probably nothing. perhaps if we wait another 24 hours and see if anything happens.

(theres an update here)