Juan Cole has a piece in today’s Salon about Mashhaddani, the speaker of parliament in Iraq, who impressed Bush so much in June, but has now turned very anti-American.
I wonder if our Man-Boy President had a chance to “look into the man’s soul” like he did with Putin? What is it; everytime he gives the thumbs up to someone, they turn anti-American in order to salvage their own reputations? Obviously our Man-Boy President hasn’t made the connection that it has something to do with him personally and his policies! Truly hilarious!
He’s like the rich guy who can’t get a date because he doesn’t bathe, use deodorant and brush his teeth, doesn’t know how to listen to people and is a loudmouthed jerk, and nobody has the heart to tell him. Every time he says something nice about someone; she has to say: “No, no, I never went out with him! NEVER!”
American foreign policy has been reduced to this!
If it weren’t for the fact that so many people were getting killed for no good reason, this Iraq fiasco would make excellent entertainment, as well as an excellent lesson about imperial hubris.

Posted by: PD | Aug 17 2006 20:08 utc | 3

Something’s missing from this picture. I mean, who really needs to possess an oilfield? We’ve never had any trouble buying oil from anyone, terrorists included.

Posted by: alabama | Aug 17 2006 20:20 utc | 5

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy.”
Saddam’s triumphant return!

Posted by: ran | Aug 17 2006 20:38 utc | 7

remobised. = remobilised.
fuck preview

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 17 2006 21:06 utc | 9

C’mon. The straight dope:
Fundamentally, the invasion of Iraq was and remains an instance of “market penetration” by military means (nothing new). This is a “peak oil” war at its very core, and “democracy blah, blah,” and the concurrent “clash of civilizations” (our fundies vs. their fundies) are utterly incidental. The mess in Iraq is, plain and simple, an oil grab instigated at the behest of Anglo-American Big Oil (primarily Exxon and BP) — core objective: getting back in the game.
Saddam specifically excluded Exxon, BP, and a couple of other western Big Oil giants from getting to play in any Iraqi oil field games back in the early 70’s, when he and his Baath Party nationalized Iraq’s oil riches.* This affront to US/British mega-energy-corp hegemony has simmered and festered all this time, but was finally “rectified” the day US tanks rolled into Baghdad and directly to the Iraqi Oil Ministry — “Mission Accomplished!” Exxon and BP in — “foreign suitors” out.
[Also, apparently, Saddam had been flirting with switching to European “euros” rather than US “dollars” as the currency for Iraq’s oil exchange — one more aggravating factor (added to the fundamental raison d’etre mentioned above) that tipped the scale to war.]
The only, truly dreaded status quo ante here would be the re-exclusion and explusion of Anglo-American Big Oil from Iraq. Period! Anything other than that, including the installation of a new brutal dictator, or splitting the country, or whatever else, “smells like “victory” to “The Decider,” Bruce “Strangelove” Cheney, James Baker the 3rd, and the real puppet masters — the BOD’s of Big Oil. That is the core of this whole ball of wax. All the rest is window dressing.
This is not to say that the titanic “clash of civilizations” we are witnessing is no big deal. Radicals on both sides of this equation are contemplating “nuclear exchange” as a means of settling the score.
My point is that a century of Anglo-American plunder across the Middle East and elsewhere — US and British foreign policy captive to and a “tool” or instrument of Big Oil — is the true and fundamental “reason” for the invasion of Iraq and so much of all this other conflict we are seeing.
*This is why Hugo Chavez is on the “shit list,” too.

Posted by: manonfyre | Aug 17 2006 21:12 utc | 11

Any projection for the future in Iraq that does not accomodate for the sheer incompetence of the occupier is probably incomplete.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Aug 17 2006 22:33 utc | 13

The oil bidness has functioned just fine with the amount of strife in the world. Record profits, in fact. The pipeline was allowed to rot on purpose. Just the small bump in oil prices that the news caused would pay for all the repairs necessary from excess profits. The environment be damned. Everyone knows about Exxon’s profits. But how many of you know about the Koch (promounced Coke) bros? They own the largest, most profitable privately held company in the world. Oil services, yep. Arch-conservatives, love Bush, and very, very low key.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 0:43 utc | 15

@Dismal Science: my bet is on General Shawani

The quasi-colonial nature of the Iraqi government may not be obvious to outsiders who see that it has been democratically elected. But its independence has always been a mirage.
For instance, its own intelligence organization should be essential to a government fighting for its life against a violent insurgency. At first sight, Iraq might appear to have one under Maj.-Gen. Mohammed al-Shahwani, but it has no budget because it is funded directly by the CIA, to the tune of $110 million to $160 million a year and, not surprising, it is to the CIA that it first reports.

Posted by: b | Aug 18 2006 13:47 utc | 17