OH SHIT! ABU, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU....

YOU CANT BE SHAKING HANDS WITH THIS PRICK AND LIVE IN ANBAR. COLLABORATORS EITHER HAVE TO LIVE IN THE FORTIFIED GREEN ZONE OR IN LONDON. PREFERABLY IN LONDON. THAT'S WHERE EVERYONE ELSE IS.

THE EMPEROR FEARS THE BAGHDAD GREEN ZONE

HE MUST GO TO AL-ASAD AIR BASE IN AL-ANBAR PROVINCE IN THE IRAQI DESERT, MORE THAN 100 MILES WEST OF THE CAPITAL.

A GATED NEOLIBERAL COMMUNITY: YOU CAN HIDE, BUT YOU CANT RUN

In the September/October issue of FP, architectural historian Jane Loeffler—who knows more about U.S. embassy design than just about anybody—gives readers a taste (sub req'd) of just what kind of embassy $1 billion buys these days:

Located in Baghdad’s 4-square-mile Green Zone, the embassy will occupy 104 acres. It will be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Beijing.... The Baghdad compound will be entirely self-sufficient, with no need to rely on the Iraqis for services of any kind. The embassy has its own electricity plant, fresh water and sewage treatment facilities, storage warehouses, and maintenance shops. The embassy is composed of more than 20 buildings, including six apartment complexes with 619 one-bedroom units. Two office blocks will accommodate about 1,000 employees.... Once inside the compound, Americans will have almost no reason to leave. It will have a shopping market, food court, movie theater, beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, a school, and an American Club for social gatherings."

But what, Loeffler asks, does an embassy this large and this costly say about the nation that built it?

If architecture reflects the society that creates it, the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad makes a devastating comment about America’s global outlook. Although the U.S. government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the United States has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the United States has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence."

THE PURPLE FLYING FICKLE FINGER OF DEMOCRACY

I'm talking, of course about Ayad Allawi, longtime C.I.A. asset and former interim prime minister of Iraq. He's making quite the PR push to get his old job back, penning an op-ed for the Washington Post, hooking up with Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition on Sunday, and even putting the high-powered GOP lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers on a $300,000 retainer.

It says everything you need to know about who the true power holders in Iraq are that Allawi, who has a "six-point plan" for Iraq that involves replacing the current Prime Minister, is campaigning in Washington -- not Baghdad. He clearly knows that despite Bush's bathetic paeans to Iraqi sovereignty, the real deciders in Iraq are not the Iraqi people, but a few dozen folks in the White House and the Pentagon. They are Allawi's true constituency.

Could the White House be seeing in the blame-Maliki-for-the-disaster-in-Iraq meme an opportunity replace the sputtering "give the surge a chance" plan with a "give Allawi a chance" plan?

• "six points call for a full partnership with the United States"

• "objective is to develop a plan to save Iraq and to save American lives,

• of course, Iraqi lives, and

• to save the American mission in Iraq."

• "If we talk around the region of two to two-and-a-half years," "I think we are in the right direction."

• Who needs Petraeus when the Allawi coup can buy them another two-and-a-half years?

• -- he's already memorized the playbook.

• "As soon as the Iraqi forces are able to stand on their feet and provide security for the Iraqis I think the draw-down should start."

who is paying for the $300,000 Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbying contract, Allawi wouldn't say

WHILE CHENEY WAS OUT OF TOWN...

International Herald Tribune

It's time to start talking

Henry A. Kissinger
Tribune Media Services
Sunday, February 25, 2007

The time has come to begin preparing for an international conference to define the political outcome of the Iraq war. Whatever happens, a diplomatic phase is necessary.

The conflicting interests of various countries must be restrained by a combination of a balance of power and an agreed legitimacy to provide an international sanction.

If America fails to achieve its immediate objectives — if terrorist camps or terrorist regimes emerge on the soil of Iraq, backed by its huge oil resources — no county with a significant Muslim population will be able to escape the consequences: not India, with the second largest Muslim population in the world; not Indonesia, with the largest; not Turkey, already contending with incursions from the Kurdish portion of Iraq; not Malaysia, Pakistan or any of the countries of Western Europe; not Russia, with its Muslim south; nor, in the end, China.

...and an Islamic fundamentalism that can claim to have ejected Russia from Afghanistan and America from Iraq, a period of extreme turbulence verging on chaos is unavoidable,

Yet none of the potential victims of these trends has been required to contribute even ideas, much less been enlisted in the quest for a political solution.

...Wise leaders on all sides are needed to establish an international order that provides security to all participants and respect to all religions.

The best impetus to a serious diplomacy over Iraq is by way of the international conference.

APPARENTLY IT HASN'T WORKED OUT THE WAY ZBIG ENVISIONED

And now let's hear from the man who started it all by arming mujaheddin in Afghanistan (1977) to prompt, and then to counter, a Soviet invasion.

Who wrote two books promoting the global empire - one repeatedly calling for a "pearl harbor" to soften up public opinion (The Grand Chessboard, 1996)

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's issued a damning indictment of the Bush Regime in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007, which you probably did not see as the United States no longer has a media--only a government propaganda ministry.

Brzezinski damned the Bush Regime's war in Iraq as

• "a historic, strategic, and moral calamity."

Brzezinski damned the war as

• "driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris."

He damned the war for

• "intensifying regional instability" and for "undermining America's global legitimacy."

Brzezinski told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that

• "the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam."

Brzezinski predicts

• "some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a 'defensive' U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan."

Brzezinski concludes his testimony with the statement that it is

• "time for the Congress to assert itself."

Of course, Zbig is a realist and what he could have never figured on was that the idiot George W. Bush would let the neocons came through the back door of the Republican party, captured the flag, take over the government (and of particular importance, the Pentagon) and implement their destructive “clash of civilizations” agenda and its attendant Straussian domestic social project.

Jacobin neocons are who are “rigid” with the tension they create “that shatter” the system. Out of control neocons, who are Straussian radicals embracing a reformulated version of Leon Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” with an unhealthy dose of Zionism, who (at least in the rarified air of their leadership) are reactionary Jews espousing the “clash of civilizations” dogma targeting Muslim society and culture

* Brzezinski and Tim Osman (Osama bin Laden) discuss the string of Jihads that Zbigniew never regrets

NEOCONSERVATIVE: CHALABI

The neoconservatives don't play much of a role in this account, which is a military history and a fair reflection of what were the forces that led us to this outcome, but one place where [they do] is almost like a Marx Brothers movie in the middle of this great story of the war. That is, the decision at the last minute to bring in a small number of Chalabi's soldiers so there could be an Iraqi face to the invasion. Then at the last minute, without anyone's knowledge -- not our own military commanders, apparently -- Chalabi himself was flown in. Talk a little about that, because he was an embodiment of the neoconservative idea, that this would become a transformation of Iraq.

Well, it's a really odd episode that I was able to report on the record, because I interviewed the American military officer who was the liaison with Chalabi. An American Army colonel, Ted Seal, was assigned to be with Chalabi and his fighters as a liaison officer, and every day he would get on the phone and report back to CENTCOM the status of Chalabi's fighters, unvetted. A lot of them were from Iran, by the way -- Iraqis who had fled to Iran. One day he gets an instruction to call General Abaziad, who is now the central commander, but he was then General Franks' deputy. General Abaziad says, "How many fighters does Chalabi have?," and this was at the time when we were coming up against the Fedayeen, it was getting a little tougher, the fall was going on, people were getting a little nervous about how this is going. Colonel Seal said, "Well, I'll ask him, he's standing right next to me." He said, "Ahmed, how many fighters do you have?" He said, "I have a thousand." So, Seal gets on the phone, "Uh, seven hundred." And they said, "Well, we'll fly them down there."

And so, it was agreed that they would be flown down to Talil and they would be kind of an Iraqi "Free French"-type force, you know, the Iraqi freedom fighters, and they would join us and they would speak the language at least, and they would be Iraqis, and forces that were reluctant to surrender to the Americans might surrender to them. Well, it emerged during this that Chalabi also wanted to go, and General Abaziad hadn't bargained for that. There was a discussion between [Abaziad] and Paul Wolfowitz; he didn't want to introduce a would-be politician into Iraq and take sides, but Wolfowitz's point was basically, "You're the guy that asked for his fighters and the fighters want their leader." So, they all do go down to Talil, they end up playing no constructive role in the war whatsoever, and Chalabi uses the opportunity to go to Nasariya and start making speeches. It's one of the little known but very interesting sub-themes in this war.

and

Chalabi got rid of his forces [mostly from Kurds and Iraqi refugees in Iran], and he brought another forces we don’t know them, or where they came from.

We where not allowed to have any contact with them, all what we saw is; they leave their camp [in Al-sayd club in Baghdad] in the evening and come back next day in the early morning, later we knew they had a death-list, this is the beginning of the “Death-Squads”.

Are they under the US command or Iranian command? I don’t know

Theatre Goal: Iraq

The open threats against the Iraqi government underscore the fraudulent character of the Bush administration’s claims to be establishing “democracy” in Iraq. From the outset, Washington’s aim was to create a pliable client state that would open Iraq’s vast oil and gas reserves to US-based energy conglomerates and allow its territory to be used for permanent US military bases. The White House operates with open contempt for any notion that Iraq is a sovereign state.