DoubleTakeFor most rich people in the world, whether Iraqi or Irish, Saudi or Sunni, the US is the best place to go if you are unwell - or obese, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
It is reported that Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has gone to the US for three weeks. Not to berate the Americans, nor to remind them that 600,000 people have died since the invasion of Iraq. Not even to ask for more money for his unfortunate country.
President Talabani has gone to the US because he is so fat.
Now this is big news, on several fronts. First of all, Talabani must have the mother of all weight problems to justify leaving Iraq at this time. Although it is true that the Iraqi parliament has been strongly criticised by the Americans for planning to give itself a two-month summer holiday. (Let's hope the Americans never invade here, eh?)
But the fact of the matter is that Talabani is so enormous that his weight could constitute yet another national crisis for Iraq. On February 25th he collapsed from dehydration and was hospitalised in Jordan for 17 days. Talabani (73) is a Sunni Kurd, and one of the most important politicians in Iraq. The Kurds call him Mam Jalal, and Mam means uncle. They need him.
So Talabani has been flown to the Mayo Clinic, in Minnesota, to be treated for obesity. Earlier this month Talabani said "I don't have any health problems except my obesity and I will treat it, God willing."
God, presumably, knows that Talabani does not get much opportunity for a healthy diet or for aerobic exercise, guarded as he is night and day from the thousands of fanatics who would dearly love to kill him.
And it is no disrespect to note the strangeness of Talabani's position: immobilised within his own body as his country explodes around him.
The health of political leaders is one of the wild cards of history. From the declining Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference to the tremors that were sent through New Labour by Blair's irregular heartbeat. Handling these crises is a delicate matter. Stalin lay unattended on the floor after his stroke for up to eight hours, because his staff were too terrified to enter his quarters without his permission.
The Iraqi doctors who have not fled to the West must be busy with the casualties of war, and trying to count the dead. These are not the ideal circumstances in which to treat an obese patient, no matter how eminent he may be. But the health of the Iraqi leaders is so vital that they are regularly bussed to the US for treatment. Earlier this week, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shia Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, was flown to the US on a military aircraft, for further tests to establish whether he has lung cancer.
All these details appeared in last Wednesday's London Times. I have not seen any other reports on either Talabani's or Al-Hakim's departure for western hospitals.
What the Iraqi people think of this situation is, as far as I know, unrecorded. The humiliation of a sophisticated people watching as their country is transformed into a Third World war zone can hardly be imagined. America's dominance over them comes not just from its military hardware at work in Iraq but from the luxury of its medical technology at home. Despite Michael Moore's excoriation of the American health care system in his new film, Sicko, for most rich people in the world, the US is the place to go if you are sick.
And so it is not just the privileged citizens in war zones who go to the US for medical treatment. Vastly wealthy countries who have not had the education, or the will power, or the history of public service to establish proper medical systems for their citizens regularly send their rich to American (and British) hospitals.
Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian millionaires have been doing this for years, while bending the knee at home to Muslim fundamentalists who hate not just the US but the modern world and all its muddy miracles.
It is a sign of the corruption and failure of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that this medical commuting continues.
But imagine a country which not only had the money, but also the education and the history of public service, and was still exporting its routine health maintenance to US. Ireland exports its cervical smears to private laboratories in the US, even though we're supposed to have had a functioning laboratory service for years. We have no foreign armies here, nor suicide bombers stalking our markets. But we still can't get it together to look after ourselves.
With so many Irish women going on shopping trips to New York it seems only logical that they should have the fee for a cervical smear included in the price of their plane ticket. That way the Irish State would save on postage. Then again, we could send our young cystic fibrosis sufferers to live permanently in the US.
Mr Talabani's story is bizarre. But there are stranger stories to tell.