The administration has doubts about whether democracy will solve Iraq’s problems:
Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.
“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”
This should come as a surprise to nobody since the neocon movers behind this war never had democracy in mind. In their infinite wisdom our addled mandarins at DoD simply planned to swap out Saddam for a neo Saddam, namely the Iranian double agent, con artist, embezzler and general nincompoop Ahmad Chalabi.
Some U.S. intelligence analysts and Iraq experts said they warned the Bush administration before the war about vanquishing Hussein’s government without having anything to replace it. But officials said the concerns were either not heard or fell too low on the priority list of postwar planning.
Chalabi’s influence, particularly with senior policymakers at the Pentagon, helped play down the prospects for trouble, some officials said. “They really did believe he is a Shiite leader,” although he had been out of the country for 45 years, a U.S. official said. “They thought, ‘We’re set, we’ve got a Shiite — check the box here.‘ ”
“We’re flying blind on this. It’s a classic case of politics and intelligence,” said Walter P. “Pat” Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist in Middle Eastern affairs. “In this case, the policy community have absolutely whipped the intel community, or denigrated it so much.”
Before anybody protests that this plan sounds so mind-numbingly stupid that nobody could possibly take it seriously, keep in mind that these same geniuses declared that our kids would be greeted with candy and flowers, that the occupation would pay for itself and last months “on the outside” and that sectarian tensions are not a problem in Iraq. The Wolfowitzes, Perles, Cheneys and Rumsfelds who run our government are simply not that bright.
When the neocon Great White Hope went up in a foul-smelling cloud the designated plan B was not elections but a limited representative government that clearly did not trust the broader will of the people. Official Washington only came around to the idea of purple fingers after one Iraqi, Shiite imam Ali al-Sistani, threatened to throw the Americans out if we held it up any longer.
But U.S. officials still have not settled on a strategy for overcoming the latest obstacle to their plan in Iraq — the growing insistence by Iraq’s most popular religious leader that an interim government must be chosen through elections, rather than through a system of caucuses as envisioned by the United States. Officials in Washington fear that a failure to settle the dispute could imperil prospects for a peaceful political transition in Iraq.
After weeks of quiet overtures and secret letters to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, administration officials say they are baffled over exactly what he wants — and even more confused about what it will take to get him to back off his demand for direct elections.
Sistani’s dream came and, sadly, went, and now we are back to the neocon plans for a benevolent dictator. Only this time you could replace ‘plans’ with ‘resigned to something that they cannot do a damned thing about’ and ‘benevolent’ with ‘intimate friend of Iran.’ Yep, $307 billion well spent.
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.
Andrew
At this point, installing Chalabi as a dictator after the invasion doesn’t seem like such a bad plan.
ThymeZone
Only days ago, some White House “spokesman” was quoted as saying that “Iraq is the key to the war on terror.”
Apparently, the people in this country have fallen so low that the government just cannot seem to show them any respect whatsoever.
How disappointing it must be for our government officials to look out upon the people see nothing worthwhile any more.
Keith
Adapt and win, baby!
(throw something against a wall to see if it sticks)
Punchy
That $307 Bill is a HUGE understatement. That’s paying for equipment and munitions, and real-time sheeot. What’s NOT be calc’d into the costs are the long-term ones, such as all this medical care for the tens of thousands injured who will need meds, physical therapy, ect. Plus, I’m not sure if the costs are factoring in the wear/tear and thus long-term replacement of much of the equipment…
ThymeZone
Punch, if you can bring yourself to do it, send me an email to addy visible at my url.
thx, PG
slide
As crazy as it sounds I think Don Imus has the best idea – lets install Saddam Hussein back into power. He knows how to get things done, been there, done that. And, he will be a check on the spreading influence of Iran which is the real menance in the Middle East.
Andrew
I would really like to party with Ken Mehlman. Mainly to see if he says stuff like, “adapt to win” at gay bars.
Pb
Mission Accomplished, baby!
slide,
I liked it better when SNL floated the idea in one of their debate spoofs:
Punchy
Thyme–I tried. Wasn’t sure if it worked. Lemmie know, and I’ll try again if necessary.
Ancient Purple
I shall patiently wait for Darrell to enter this thread and tell us that a new-and-improved Saddam is better than the old one and that $300+ billion and who knows how many dead were well worth it.
Frank
I was with you until you started talking like there is an option allowing the US to disapoint Sistani there aint. If we even start to act like we’re going to try to put in a dictator against Sistani’s will the Shia insurgency we will face will make the previous Sunni insurgency look like a day at the park.
Analyst
Too late for Chalabi. We payed with macaranas. Soon we shall be liberated by Allah in North America. No, I’m not kidding.
Rusty Shackleford
The Republican strategy for Iraq amounts to nothing more than “Sit & Spin.”
slide
I’m waiting for MacBuckets to tell us how much the Iraq people are so grateful for being liberated.
Tim F.
Then you’re still with me. I said:
Even the idiots in DC understand that they cannot make one thing or another happen in Iraq at this point. Rather it looks like they have resigned themselves to the fact that democracy will probably fail and made plans to do what little they can to deal with it.
Sadly I think that Sadr and Zarqawi’s mutual sectarian thuggery has sunk Sistani’s moderating influence in Iraq. The Shiites can still kick us out (or worse) at a whim but the owner of the whim is no longer Ali al-Sistani.
fwiffo
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Frank
Tim- Ok that does make sense, though I wouldn’t entirely count Sistani out just yet.
The Other Steve
Ok. Keeping in mind all of that.
The plan still seems mind-numbingly stupid.
I think even Darrell could come up with a better plan.
Zifnab
There’s your problem right there John. The Bush Administration is an ardent opposer of Plan B. This successfully explains every blunder they have ever made. I mean, with a name like “The Decider”, how can you be any more clear that you’re not pro-Choice. Once you’ve decided, the decision is made. No aborting this mission. Because if we pulled out, we’d have wasted all our little soldiers and just left a giant mess across the midsection of Iraq. And it explains a lack of boyarmor for our troops since Bush doesn’t think we need to wear protection when going in.
It all makes perfect sense now. How could I have been so blind?
ThymeZone
Punch, haven’t seen your missive as of a couple mins ago.
If you take the letters ppg and ood and ing and put them into one string without spaces and park them in front of @rocketmail dot com, you’ll have an email address.
SeesThroughIt
Ha! Awesome post, Zifnab.
As for this:
Did you see The Daily Show‘s clip package of Ken-doll repeating that shit ad nauseum? Christ on a cracker!
Tsulagi
“Mind-numbingly stupid” would be about as generous an assessment of the PNAC retardocons as you could have. FUBAR just doesn’t adequately cover it.
How this administration polls in positive digits on national security is beyond reason. Osama and Iran have really got to hate one particular amendment in our Constitution: the 22nd that limits presidential terms.
mrmobi
Nice Joni Mitchell, Tim.
But one depressing post…
mrmobi
One more thing. Now that it’s beginning to dawn on our glorious leadership that they have hopelessly fucked up this effort, it’s only a matter of time until the assignment of blame begins.
First in line: hippies, kos, Dean, Murtha, Clinton (both), Durbin (he called us a Nazi!)… you get it.
These guys are fucking nasty when they win, imagine what they are going to be like when they have to figure out a way to blame the most colossal foreign policy fuckup in history on someone other than themselves!
Tim, you don’t type with your feet, like John C, do you?
Tim F.
No, my elbows. Why?
Don
Unpopular a statement as it might be, I still think if we were serious about bringing a real improved government that could serve as an inspiration in the middle east we should have put in an iron-willed dictator. The inspiration we need to provide to the middle east isn’t a democracy where the majority can kick the shit out of the minorities and do so with legitimacy, it’s a system where all the factions are forced to make nice with each other regardless of religious bent.
I’d have loved to have seen a government installed where people were allowed to exercise religious freedom while being required to leave people they disagreed with the fuck alone. I wonder if after a few years of that kind of personal freedom we’d have seen people ready to pick up self-governance without the need to shoot everyone they declare an infidel.
Maybe I’m giving people too much credit in thinking they’d learn something from that. We’ve had theoretical religious freedom here for a few hundred years and all it’s done is make the majority more and more determined to keep it for themselves while removing it from everyone they disagree with.
Kimmitt
Dolchstosslegende. Know it, live it, love it.
mrmobi
I was just noticing the lack of mangled words in your posts. John needs a new keyboard or something. And you are doing marvelously with the elbows.
srv
Let’s just trade. Send Baghdad Bush over so we can have a dictatorship over there and not over here.
mrmobi
Kimmitt:
Wow. Good word. I love Wikipedia. Kimmitt, have you seen the German film “Downfall”? It’s about Hitler’s last 10 days. Very, very well done, lots of Dolchstoss from the man himself, inside his bunker. Shot in Petersburg, Russia, because the architecture matches what Berlin of that period looked like. Based on the memoir of one of Hitler’s secretaries.
With this latest court ruling, “activist” judges will be the first target. Rove is warming up the smear machine. This is gonna get ugly.
Perry Como
We tried that in Iran.
SeesThroughIt
Wow, Kimmit. Thanks for that–it’s the frame in which all this right-wing bleating actually makes sense. Demented, paranoid, pathetic, logically and factually incorrect sense, but sense nonetheless.
p.lukasiak
Here’s the solution…..
Turn western Iraq over to Syria — throw in Kirkuk and its oil fields to sweeten the pot….
Turn Kurdish Iraq over to Turkey…they’ll be happy to repress the Kurds for us in exchange for some oil fields…
Turn the rest of Iraq over to Iran — heck they are already practically running the rest of Iraq, why not make it official?
Jackmormon
God, I hope Sistani has an excellent security detail.
Todd
Great! And all we got for our $300 billion dollars was this lousy Burqa Fall Fashion Show!
Keith
I watched it, but I fell into a hypnotic trance watching the massive bags under his eyes sway as he talked, so I didn’t catch them all.
jaime
Let’s start a war. Let’s start a nuclear war. At the GAYBAR GAYBAR…
Darrell
You know what, p.lukasiak is one of the very few leftists with the balls to actually suggest an alternative plan.. so for that he deserves some respect. And let me tell you, he is wayyyy more ‘reality based’ than most of you leftist whackjobs posting here. At least he posts specific alternative which can be debated, no matter how whacky they may be by my opinion.. Most of you whackjobs criticize with no specific suggestions because you’re idiots
lard lad
Gee, Darrell… the only “specific suggestion” I ever notice you plugging is “Let’s do what Bush wants… he knows what’s best.”
Pb
ROFL. That’s a new one… spam trackbacks doing keyword seaerches.