David Kelly was the biological weapons expert who gave an interview to Andrew Gilligan of the BBC which revealed the "sexing up" of the Blair dossier justifying the Iraq War. He was found dead after giving evidence to a Commons Select Committee where he confirmed that he was indeed the source.

In a new book, a Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker, claims that he did not commit suicide as the Hutton Inquiry concluded. Rather he was murdered, most likely by Iraqis opposed to Saddam who feared he would make further revelations about the lies that took Britain into the war. The murder was covered up by the British establishment who feared a diplomatic crisis.

In 2005 I asked about the ethics and implications of K Street lobbyists (BGR) Barbour Griffith & Rogers' involvement with a Kurdish political party (KDP) to lobby for their interests in the explosive Kirkuk while our nation is at war there. In an August 27th entry at Laura Rozen's War and Piece blog, she reveals that the same lobbyists are representing former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, whose political organization Iraqyia is challenging current Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Allawi's secular political alliance withdrew from the Iraqi government last Friday. This topic has been discussed here at Daily Kos briefly in the recent past [see Bob Fertik] and I believe it deserves more attention. Since when is K Street in the the coup business?

[Frog Pond]

David Ignatius tries...he really does.  But his problem is that the Establishment's foreign policy goals are incoherent, suffer from fatal internal contradictions, and are inconsistent with our own intelligence.  I'm going to begin here with Ignatius' conclusion.  After noting that our new policy of Iran-containment is a return to our policy in the 1980's, Ignatius notes the obvious:  

From Citizens for Legitimate Government

Former US-installed Iraqi prime minister returning to Iraq --Allawi: 'We are going to fight for our country [the US-backed oil law].'

I had a head-shaking moment while having the unfortunate experience of watching CNN a few minutes ago.  Ed Henry did an update on his "exclusive" report (which consists of him reading IraqSlogger scoops) about Iyad Allawi's hiring of a GOP lobbying firm to promote the overthrow of the Iraqi government and his installation as Prime Minister (OK, Henry didn't completely put it that way, but that's essentially what's going on). Blitzer and Henry then let slip what that lobbying firm is doing with all that money, and how it's working.

Gallons of cyber ink have been spilled about how he who did not learn history, George W. Bush, would now mangle and distort history on his way to repeating it. The idea that the Vietnam war was a noble fight, and one that was winnable (whatever that means) had it not been for those lily-livered Americans who just “gave up” after roughly a dozen years and 60,000 deaths, would be laughable, and not worth a comment, were it not for a concerted effort by a cadre of neocons to rewrite history in just this way.

Talk in the Traditional Media for the last week has been focused on the weakness of the Maliki government.  This comes as the Media is deciding to focus, through some impressive word parsing, on the narrative of Democrats admitting that the surge is working.  Some Democrats are falling into the trap and are refocusing their message away from the failure of the surge militarily to the failure of the Iraqi political progress.    

The whole thing seems very coordinated; almost as if there is a PR campaign underway to create the conditions for the removal of Maliki as Prime Minister.  But that couldn’t be true, could it?

I've been following political uses of the Internet since the very beginning, but this one is a shocker. A top GOP lobbying firm in DC is using the Internet to overthrow Prime Minister Maliki. Shall we call it a Coup D'Internet?

Some interesting developments have occurred that seem just a little too coincidental. First we hear, via cnn.com of all places, two recent front page stories concerning Iraq. Then via ThinkProgress, we hear of a conservative lobbying group suddenly taking interest in "former" prime minister Allawi as a possible replacement for Maliki.

Haven't we been down this road before.

Don't miss Pepe Escobar's brilliant article with the above title in today's Asia Times. I'll spare you the biblical history and his stomach-wrenching overview of the real situation there, and cut to the news. Escobar's red alert is about Iraq's Big-Oil-authored oil law, due to be signed in December. He entitles that section of the article...

The coalition of the drilling

World public opinion must switch to red alert. The real, not virtual, future of Iraq will be decided in December. The whole point is a new oil law - which is in fact a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent. ...

Variations of this story have been around since well before Nouri al-Maliki took his seat as prime minister:

Senators Urge Bush on Pressuring Maliki to Stop Violence

Sunday, October 22, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats urged the White House on Sunday to step up the pressure on Iraq's prime minister to crush the militias that are inciting sectarian violence and undermining a fragile democracy.

Senators from both parties expressed wavering confidence in Nouri al-Maliki's ability to come to grips with the rising bloodshed. They said he was the "best horse" for now to support. But they agreed that if no political solution can be found between warring Shiite and Sunni sects, peace will never be achieved.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Bush administration must pressure the Iraqis to make political compromises on power and oil resources.

....

Why, just last spring -- a Friedman Unit ago -- there were stories like this when Iyad Allawi was still PM:

It would be awkward to admit at this date that our policies in Iraq have led to civil war, even more that our troops are caught in the middle of it. The thing to do then is to proclaim that the civil war has not yet officially started, as General Pace did on March 5 on Meet the Press

MR. RUSSERT: If you were to be asked whether things in Iraq are going well or badly, what would you say? How would you answer?

GEN. PACE: I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at...

MR. RUSSERT: Knight-Ridder reported this week that U.S. intelligence agency more than two years ago said that the insurgency "had deep local roots, was likely to worsen, and could lead to civil war." And that was just ignored by political and military leadership because they wanted to believe their own rosy scenario.

GEN. PACE: I do not believe it has deep roots. I do not believe that they're on the verge of civil war...

What was that you were saying, Donald?  Things are going great in Iraq?  The media is exaggerating the problems, the country is doing well, and violence is decreasing.  Those talking about civil war are just helping the terrorists.

Well, tell it to the PM.  In this case, former Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi.  In an interview with the BBC, Allawi says

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more.

"If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

The man America put in place as Iraqi prime minister says Iraq is in civil war.  Looks like PM Allawi just joined the ranks of those radical left wingers who are pulling for the terrorists.

The Sunni choose Allawi as their leader

The new bloc was announced today in Baghdad after the largest three blocs of Maram-the Iraqi list, the Accord Front and al-Mutlaq's Dialogue Front-signed an agreement to form one unified political body.

This agreement will grant the new political body a significant political weight with a total of approximately 80 seats in the parliament and with good prospects for reaching something close to 100 seats if a few other smaller lists like Mishaan al-Juboori's list, the Islamic union of Kurdistan, Turkmen and Christians chose joining it. Of course these numbers are not final until the election commission gives the final count and the international investigation team verifies those results and finishes studying claims of fraud. Allawi who appeared in a press conference today after a relatively long hiatus emphasized again that talking about forming the government should take place only after the investigation is over.

This is an exercise in reverse data mining, or 20/20 hindsight research. In order to save a lot of time I cheat. I use my eyes to input data and my brain to process it. Not quite up to Admiral Poindexter standards but I'm still learning. Perhaps the exercise was silly, but the results were interesting.

The sanguinary and intractable logic of the situation in Iraq persists in trumping any relentlessly cheerful, delusional Administration PR to the contrary. The woeful appearance of a somber, but unrepentant, Preznit W. on Sunday TV prolonged the attempt to sell continued pointless violence as if it were soap flakes. Keep repeating the message and the people will buy! Well, not if the clothes stay dirty.

I have a post at Needlenose rounding up some of the news stories about the preliminary voting numbers announced in Iraq today.  To sum them up:

-- The governing Shiite religious parties appear likely to come close to, or even duplicate, the roughly 50 percent of the vote they won in January.

-- The much-hyped slate of former U.S.-installed prime minister Iyad Allawi is doing poorly, getting only 14% of the vote in Baghad (thought to be one of its strongholds).

-- Ahmad Chalabi, running on his own after being kicked out of leaving the Shiite alliance, is doing even worse, with only 0.3 percent of the vote in Baghdad and Basra.

This may mean that Chalabi doesn't even get a seat in the legislature. See the extended copy for some added context on the voting.

There's a reason I'll sometimes force myself to listen to a Bush speech. Every time he gets in front of the cameras I figure there's about a 1 percent chance he'll just resign--and not necessarily at the start of the speech, but maybe in the middle. Maybe mid-sentence: "You know what? Fuck this. I quit. I'm going home. It's too fucking hard and I don't feel like it anymore..." But actually watching this one tonight, I think he honestly fails to understand that the two goals he repeatedly states in Iraq--a soverign nation-state with popularly sanctioned government, and a strategic partner and ally for the U.S. in the region--are simply incompatible. Listening to Bush's speech tonight, I think he honestly fails to understand that the two goals he repeatedly states in Iraq--a soverign nation-state with popularly sanctioned government, and a strategic partner and ally for the U.S. in the region--are simply incompatible.