US White House hopeful haggles in Baghdad market

BAGHDAD: Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain boasted about shopping and chatting to Iraqis in a constantly bombed Baghdad market on Sunday, adamant that the US troop surge is paying off.   

Making a lightning trip to Iraq, McCain and three fellow Republican senators told slightly incredulous journalists about their "deeply moving" downtown walkabout, sipping tea and chewing the fat with welcoming Iraqis.   

"After landing at the airport we drove from the airport into various parts of the city. We stopped at Bab Sharqi market where we spent well over an hour shopping and talking with the local people," said McCain.   

"Things are better and there are encouraging signs. I have been here many times over the years. Never have I been able to drive from the airport. Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today," he boasted.   

Hundreds of people have been killed in Iraq during the last week, including 60 slaughtered in a similar Baghdad market on Thursday evening, as car and suicide bombers have continued to defy the new Iraqi-US security crackdown.   

A security official told AFP earlier on Sunday that the Iraqi death toll was up 15 per cent last month. US commanders openly admit there is no military solution to the lethal sectarian warfare, insurgency and rampant kidnapping.   

Yet Lindsey Graham, who as a Senator enjoys a six-figure salary, boasted about spending five dollars in what is one of the most favoured bombing sites in Baghdad and infamous as a nest of criminals under Saddam Hussein.   

"I brought five rugs for five bucks. People were engaging and just a few weeks ago, hundreds of people, dozens of people were killed in this same place," said Graham.   

On a trip blatantly directed at American voters, the senators were adamant that the new US crackdown was working and lashed out at Democrats for trying to force a US withdrawal and the media for not reporting the fuller picture.   

"I'm not saying mission accomplished... it's long and it's hard. and it's very, very difficult, very, very difficult task ahead of us," said 70-year-old White House hopeful McCain, who was a prisoner in Hanoi during the Vietnam war.

Although the deployment of 80,000 Iraqi and US forces has seen a decline in sectarian execution-style killings, insurgents are increasingly taking their battle to other towns and cities.   

"I studied warfare. I'm a student of history. If you control the capital city of a nation you have a significant advantage," countered McCain as one reporter giggled at the back.   

"The American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here. They're not getting the full picture of the drop in murders," he hammered, reeling off a list of positives he felt the press were ignoring.   

"The most deeply moving thing for me was to mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis and a seemingly endless street market. To stop, to have chai tea, to haggle over the price of a rug," chimed in Senator Mike Pence.   

Yet journalists openly scoffed afterwards at what they considered a public awareness exercise secured on the streets by massive US security.   

The senators admitted to "having protection", driving in armoured Humvees and keeping their body armour on, although saying they were encouraged by accompanying US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus to remove their helmets.   

McCain's visit came a week after he told Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show that there were parts of Baghdad where they could take a walk, in comments derided by a CNN journalist based in Iraq as a "Neverland".   

The Democratic-led US Congress last week conditioned fresh funding for the war to withdrawing most US combat forces from Iraq by March 31, 2008.   

"If you set a deadline now, it will undercut everything positive that's going on," said Graham. "The president will veto any bill with a deadline."   

McCain, who was last week placed well behind his main rival, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in the race for the 2008 Republican nomination, has long supported the war and argued that more soldiers were needed.