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David Adesnik, a research analyst in Washington DC, received his doctorate in international relations from Oxford.
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How Appealing
# Posted 11:12 AM by Ariel David Adesnik 
The general appeared confident that, with help from talented Iraqis, he would succeed.Even discounting the inexplicable reference to Saddam as a mushroom, Gen. Garner's remarks seem pretty formulaic and unconvincing. The funny thing is, he knows what he's talking about.
"Arabs are very proud people," he said. "Proud as we are." In particular, the Iraqis are "pretty sophisticated" and have a "lot of wealth, it's just not been shared among them."
"There's an intelligentsia," he added. "The Arabs are great traders, they're organized." He believes, he said, that the Iraqis are "motivated, even though they've lived under a mushroom for 25 years."
UPDATE: Many of you have written to say that living under a mushroom is best understood as living like a mushroom, i.e. being kept in the dark and fed manure. There is even one former mushroom farmer out there (MD), who can verify that that actually is the best way to raise the fungi in question.
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