Obama was right (this once)

Obama was Right:

ABCNews takes Obama to task on Iraq. Well, he deserves all he gets on that score, as his Iraq plans demonstrate neither an understanding of the military nor reasonable judgment as concerns the fate of millions of Iraqis or the stability of the region.

Yes, he deserves all he gets... almost.

No sooner did Obama realize his mistake -- and correct himself -- but he immediately made another.

"We need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan, people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists," he said.

So far, so good.

"But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they're not in Afghanistan," Obama said.

Iraq has many problems, but encouraging farmers to grow food instead of opium poppies isn't one of them. In Iraq, oil fields not poppy fields are a major source of U.S. technical assistance.

Agriculture is indeed tremendously important to Iraq. The Tigris and Euphrates river valleys are very fertile, which is why so many ancient civilizations were rooted in Mesopotamia -- a fact even an ABCNews reporter might have learned in school if he'd been listening. If not, he might have learned it from the US military, which has been talking for quite some time about efforts to set up agricultural unions and coops, chicken and fish farms, help refurbish tractor factories, and so forth.

Why is it that, five years into the war, the media still have this concept that Iraq is a Saudi Arabia-style desert where nothing grows but oil? The reporter objects to Obama's "pushback" on the issue, claiming that he has reported on Iraq "extensively" and that the claim strikes him as "doubtful."

OK, well, it's still true. Iraq needs agricultural experts, and there's much to be gained from deploying them. Not only does the agricultural industry exist in Iraq, it's the main industry in much of the country. Not only is Mesopotamia fertile, it's fertile enough that -- when it begins to be fully developed again -- it will be a major source of wealth and food in a time when food prices are rising worldwide.