Planning a thoroughly modern coup

Iraqslogger has a great piece that reproduces the text of a contract signed between Ayad (Iyad) Allawi and Robert Blackwill, in the latter’s capacity as head of a DC lobbying firm.
Allawi undertakes to pay Blackwill’s firm $50,000 a month for, in the first instance, six months starting August 1. In return Blackwill’s firm, BRG, will “provide strategic counsel and representation for an on behalf of Dr. Ayad Allawi before the US Government, Congress, media and others.”
Blackwill was the Bush administration’s envoy to Iraq in 2004, when longtime CIA protege Allawi was briefly PM there.
Last Saturday, BRG scored its first hit for Allawi when it succeeded in placing an anti-Maliki article, allegedly “written” by him, in the WaPo.
The contract featured on Iraqslogger is defined as running from August 1. But it was only signed– by both parties– on Monday (August 20). I guess that Allawi, a canny operator in the Washington scene for a long time, wanted to make sure that BRG would do something concrete for him before he signed it.
I’m still trying to figure out who’s ripping off whom in all this.
Where does Allawi get $300,000 to drop on these “lobbying” services?
(Silly question, Helena. Look at the amount of our US taxpayer “aid” that went missing in Iraq during Allawi’s premiership.)
Why does Bob Blackwill, who had a long career with the US State Department, not have enough retirement funds stashed away that he feels he needs to sleaze around making money doing such underhanded things?
(Answer: Of course he has plenty of retirement $$. But always wanting “more money! more money!” is the all-American way of life! Isn’t it?)
Excuse me while I go and have a bath. Even writing about this stuff makes me feel unclean.

39 thoughts on “Planning a thoroughly modern coup”

  1. “Where does Allawi get $300,000 to drop on these “lobbying” services?”
    “(Silly question, Helena. Look at the amount of our US taxpayer “aid” that went missing in Iraq during Allawi’s premiership.)”
    Some forgot so fast small things pumped in the news and vanished fast…
    Helen, during Allawi time he was transferred $5.0Billions to US from Iraqi oil revenue and stated at that time that this money will be kept in US for Iraq! Oh yah for Iraq…

  3. He is the one to fit the new dictatorship for Iraq after Saddam he was Saddam boy!!
    Iyad Allawi, the CIA’s New Stooge in Iraq
    http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick06262004.html
    “Dr. Haifa al-Azawi, a California-based gynaecologist and a U.S. citizen who went to school with Allawi in Baghdad in the 1960s, remembered Mr. Allawi as: “big, husky man. The Baath party union leader, who carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it terrorizing the medical students, was a poor student and chose to spend his time standing in the school courtyard or chasing female students to their homes. His medical degree is bogus and was conferred upon him by the Baath party, soon after a World Health Organization (WHO) grant was orchestrated for him to go to England and study public health accompanied by his Christian wife, whom he dumped later to marry a Muslim woman. In England he was a poor student, visiting the Iraqi embassy at the end of each month to collect his salary as the Baath party representative. According to his first wife and her family members, he spent his time dealing with assassins doing the dirty work for the Iraqi government, until his time was up and he became their target”. It is not uncommon in Iraq during the Baath Party rule to give special favours for those who choose to serve its agenda.”
    http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan190604.htm

  4. Perhaps the issue of disengagement from Iraq is not just a matter between the Iraqis and the American government-the mercenary contractors and Beltway parasites should be asked whether they are ready to pull away from the hog trough.

  5. I’m just as astonished to see a certain name in the contract — Andrew Parasiliti. (Iraq specialist, UVA alum, former top staffer to Chuck Hagel, program chair at Middle East Institute & @ Harvard ME Center, etc….)
    ……
    ……
    ?

  6. My goodness! An official of a foreign party contracting with a DC lobbying firm. Whatever will they think of next. How “underhanded!”
    Calgon take me away!
    I’d suspect that most every country/major political party on earth pays similar amounts for such services, including the authoring of op-eds. Why is this remotely shocking?

  7. Sure, sure Vadim, you protesteth too much — As we’ve long carped on here, battles for international and of US opinion are critical arena of world politics…. (even some chap named Jefferson had a “decent respect” — to what the Bushistas find so reprehensible….)
    The special onus here is on the personalities involved, former US government officials (and staffers) now shilling for interested parties from another country now actively working to engineer a “coup” (sic) against a regime the USG currently supports. (and it will likely be done via underhanded Benador media techniques — all of which will be rationalized as “serving the broader cause.” CNN the past few days has joined the shilling for “getting rid” of Maliki, as have several US Senators, e.g. Warner….)
    And so it goes — the new, great game…. for “control” of minds (not open minds) And it still “stinks.”
    Never mind the tactics; won’t the fallout be peachy? The orchestrated coup (a la 63?); Allawi gets installed, the Shia (via the long compliant Sistani) go ballistic —
    and all hell breaks loose….
    which if you think about it would be quite fine from certain vantage points…..
    And someday, maybe the “real” American people will find out how their mainstream sources of information were manipulated…. as they were in 1991 (remember the Kuwaiti incubators), in 2003, and again today in a march to war w/ Iran
    Ah, but the paid p.r. consultant doesn’t care — the “cause” today, the client, is the focus.

  8. “real” American people will find out how their mainstream sources of information were manipulated….”
    Different Day Same Mainstream Sources!with same “Reals”

  9. Vadim always protesteths too much. His regular defense of politics as usual results from his near-sightedness — one of the great short comings of Middle East politics.

  10. Hi Stephen! I didn’t “defend” the quite ordinary practice of political lobbying. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t need defending.
    The guts of Helena and Scott’s complaint seems to be the content of Allawi’s editorial, which we’re asked to believe portends some kind of coup. I rather doubt that this coup is going to occur, because unlike Scott, I can’t imagine how anyone least of all the GOP gains from chaos in Iraq, esp. insofar as it keeps them from stealing all that oil, and from victory at the polls. In any case, a discussion of the editorial itself would certainly be more worthwhile than disingenuous well-poisoning. No link there, alas.
    Remembering the “imminent Iran invasion” (any day now!) I also hoped the group would desist from fortune telling.
    I do hope your stomach feels better. All the best to you.

  11. “I can’t imagine how anyone least of all the GOP gains from chaos in Iraq…”
    And yet somehow the creation of four and a half years of constant and steadily increasing chaos has been the U.S.’s main accomplishment since they forced their way via shock and awe into the country. Go figure.
    So, it would seem that either they DO somehow gain from chaos in Iraq, or, as I believe, they are simply a criminally clueless, inept gang of clowns, stumbling and bumbling around like Keystone Kops on crack, managing to find the wrong thing to do in every situation.

  12. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701579.html
    Iraq is a failing state, not providing the most basic security and services to its people and contributing to an expanding crisis in the Middle East.
    Iraq must be a full partner with the United States in the development of a security plan that leads to the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. forces over the next two years
    Iraq’s security forces need …a nonsectarian security command structure. Empowering militias is not a sustainable solution
    We need a regional diplomatic strategy that increasingly invests the United Nations and the Arab world in Iraqi security and reconstruction
    Iraq must be a single, independent federal state.
    There can be no sustainable economic development and growth without reliable electricity, running and potable water, and basic health care.
    It’s suddenly clear why you find the editorial so objectionable Scott. To hear dastardly Allawi promoting the same ideas advanced on this blog. Coup-fomenter, lobbyist-payer and now plagiarist!

  13. The Dick Cheney Shogunate Regency has never once “planned” anything as regards either Iraq or Afghanistan. Consequently, only manifest failures on an epic scale have resulted from “faith based” crime marketed mercilessly through manufactured mendacity and managed mystification. So what could conceivably lead any sentient carbon-based life form to conclude that this same corrupt and clueless claque could plan and carry out a “coup”? Most Americans upon hearing that word would immediately think of either chickens or a classic 1940s automobile.
    The “empire” (as scripted and produced for television) makes its own “reality,” remember? Fanatical “middle American” voters uncritically support Deputy Dubya Bush because “they like the way he walks and they like the way he points,” remember? Neo-con pundits like the New York Times’ David Brooks “brush up against” Deputy Dubya at invitation-only Oval Office circle-jerks and conclude that his ideas have “breadth” because Boy Blunder physically spreads his arms out wide to “illustrate” them. Democratic Party presidential candidates like John Kerry and You-Know-Her sign on to slurp the same “Fear Itself” Kool Aid but claim they can “do it better.”
    What a nation of nuts.

  14. “Iraq is a failing state”
    Wrong. Iraq is not a state at all. The first thing the Americans did was to systematically destroy the state and the civil apparatus. Now there is no state left, and what they insist upon calling a government is nothing but a make believe.

  15. Shirin, Pet(I am in North of England disguise Today)
    In all the best detective series they ask who benefits? to shortlist the suspects. I saw it on Columbo.
    And yet somehow the creation of four and a half years of constant and steadily increasing chaos has been the U.S.’s main accomplishment since they forced their way via shock and awe into the country. Go figure.
    So, it would seem that either they DO somehow gain from chaos in Iraq, or, as I believe, they are simply a criminally clueless, inept gang of clowns, stumbling and bumbling around like Keystone Kops on crack, managing to find the wrong thing to do in every situation.
    Who do you think benefits from an enemy who fired SCUD at them fifteen years ago being reduced to chaotic anarchy?
    Who do you think would benefit from the next potential nuclear armed power in the Middle East being reduced to chaotic anarchy.
    The really frightening thought is that the neighbouring country to the west might come after that on the list.

  16. Well, Frank, I understand the principle behind the argument you are suggesting. However, for that kind of analysis to make sense requires, first of all, that the chaos be intentionally produced. Chaos can, and I believe usually does, come about when no one intends for it to.
    I am acquainted with the arguments that the chaos in Iraq was produced intentionally, I have examined them carefully in the context of the history of this thing and the people who perpetrated it, and I do not buy it. It seems quite clear that the Bushites really believed they would shock and awe their way into the country, be greeted with sweets, flowers, and kisses, put their imported puppets in nominal charge, and quickly transform Iraq into a base for their military, political, and economic operations in the region. I really believe those clowns, knowing not the slightest thing about tigers, grabbed onto the tail of a two ton tiger, were genuinely shocked when the tiger did not roll over purring like a well-raised house cat, and have been making it up as they go along, flying by the seats of their pants, and doing absolutely everything to make the tiger more and more pissed off by the day.
    I don’t think any of the parties to this mess want chaos, and I think chaos is what results when multiple parties are struggling desperately to defeat the other and gain the upper hand.
    I also think that, while Israel IS a factor, it is less of a factor, and in a different way than many people would like to believe. I am also not convinced that Israel actually profits – or even sees itself as profiting from the kind of disastrous mess that the Bushies have turned Iraq into.

  17. Shirin
    I unwind by reading about the 30 Years War. It is one of the best pieces of complexity around. It is a war between the Swedes and the Austrians, fought in Germany by mercenary armies. France won and Spain lost.
    I have put http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jesuits-Thirty-Years-War-Confessors/dp/0521820170/ref=wl_it_dp/202-9047483-6985443?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3MZVB1HBYSBBA&colid=33M61D7BO9L7H
    on my wish list for my Birthday
    The Emperor had been got at and persuaded that he should use the power of his office to roll back the progress of the Protestant Reformation.
    This became a rebellion in Bohemia which was sucessfully supressed. However the entry of protestant powers into the war and their continuation in the field was funded by the Great Cardinal Richelieu in pursuit of France’s objective of breaking the Spanish Encirclement and weakening Austria.
    I am likely to be dead before the first ojective history of this present exercise in strategic incompetence is published so it is fun to speculate on what the objectives of different country’s Grand Strategy might be, and who’s agent provocateur put what idea in who’s mind.
    Chaos is what ensued in Germany when a number of different parties pursued their own agendas without knowledge or coordination of others.

  18. “(Silly question, Helena. Look at the amount of our US taxpayer”
    Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton (nyse: HAL – news – people ) subsidiary KBR (nyse: KBR – news – people ).
    http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html
    Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company – with which he was briefly associated – bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.
    He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.
    For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the U.S. military outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
    He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, he said.
    Vance told a federal agent that the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, U.S. soldiers, State Department workers and Iraqi government employees.
    The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co. “It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” Vance says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”
    So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other evidence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
    For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein.
    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nationworld/stories/082507dnintcontractors.6935f321.html
    http://www.startribune.com/722/v-print/story/1382037.html
    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nationworld/stories/082507dnintcontractors.6935f321.html
    The largest case is against Maj. John Cockerham, who was indicted Wednesday with his wife and sister on charges he took $9.6 million in bribes from contractors in Kuwait. Cockerham will plead not guilty, says his lawyer, Jimmy Parks Jr.
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-08-23-iraqbribe_N.htm
    • Col. Curtis Whiteford, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, who were indicted in February on charges they participated in a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme at a contracting office in south-central Iraq. All three pleaded not guilty. In that same case, Lt. Col. Bruce Hopfengardner pleaded guilty last year. Hopfengardner was sentenced to 21 months in prison in June.
    • Chief Warrant Officer Peleti “Pete” Peleti Jr., who pleaded guilty in February to taking a $50,000 bribe from a businessman seeking a food-service contract. Peleti has asked to withdraw his guilty plea; a hearing is scheduled for Oct. 5.
    http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN2219627120070823
    Textron will pay $1.15 million as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, and an additional $3.5 million to resolve charges filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in U.S. District Court in Washington.
    http://www.projo.com/news/content/TEXTRON_FINE_08-24-07_P06S8P3.3392ccc.html#

  19. Frank and Shirin,
    That was an interesting dialogue between you two. Personnally I’d take a kind of middle way.
    I think that the US is there because of geostrategical reason : aka control this corner of the world, since it has the thing it needs most : oil. I don’t think that they have been manipulated by Israel and are only pushing a pro-Israel agenda : who would start a war like this costing billiards only for a foreign country. That some in Israel have seen this as a good opportunity for Israel is another thing. They may have changed their mind by now.
    I don’t think that the whole Bush government thought that invading and occupying Iraq would be a cakewalk. That was mostly propaganda in order to get the support of the US opinion. For these relatively cynical leaders (I’m thinking to Cheney and Rusmfeld), the main goal was first to get there. If things were going smoothly : good. If things were much more difficult, they knew perfectly that once inside Iraq, it would be very difficult to withdraw and that they were there for a long time : look how the main Democrate candidates are speaking.. they don’t really take the needed steps for an immediate withdrawal : in that they were foresighted. Also, concerning the actual chaos : I don’t think that it was what they wanted. However, now that things are turning from bad to worse, I’m sure that they want chaos : the logic behind it is : if we can’t have it, then nobody else should have it.
    Concerning Allawi, I see things like this :
    1) The US has realized that his main allies in Iraq (aka the Kurds and above all the SIIC (former SCIRI) of Al’Hakin are too pro-iranians. So they are desperately trying to keep the Sunni on board, in order to counterbalance the Iranian influence.
    2) Alas, this doesn’t seem to work, because the SIIC and the Dawa are set against any forgiving to the former Baathists. Plus the leaders pushed forward by the US are not very credible with the Iraqi because they are mostly exiled who only returned with the US invasion.
    3) After the Aprile 2004 insurrection where the US fighted against the Al’Sadr current, they tried to integrate his supporters in the political process, because they needed a larger support for the Iraqi government. But for that to work, the US should have set a timetable for withdrawal.
    4) The Al’Sadr current has never got the favor of the Americans and vice-versa because : a) They are fundamentalists on societal matters, b) they are for a centralized state and adverse to the federalist constitutin adopted under pressure of the US, c) they are against the privatization of oil and d) as alredy said, they want a time table for withdrawal.
    5) Given the position of Al’ Sadr current on points a) b) c) and d), among the Shiite current, they are the most fit to strike a deal with the Sunnis. Although there is an obstacle in the fact that they are somewhat stubborn with the debaathification process.
    6) That deal, between the Al’Sadr current and the religious Sunni current, is what the US fears above all. So the US has a direct interest to prevent such a deal.
    7) Is that a case taht each time Moktada was calling to the Sunnis and each time the medias talked about forecoming encounter between Sunnis leaders and Moktada’s current, there were strong actions taken against the Shiites (huge bombings killing hundreds shiites, or attacks on the sacred shrine, like in Samara).
    8) Now, since the beginning of the surge, the US is going after the Mehdi army and is clearly trying to crush the Al’Sadr current.
    9) There is also a new tactic, to arm Sunni militants “to bring security in their neighbourhood” ?!!!
    10) Al’Maliki government is blocked; it is under siege in the Green zone without any means to bring basic services to the population. It wasn’t even able to bring the oil law so avidly awaited by the Americans.
    11) Although Al’ Maliki has lost the support of almost every one, it isn’t clear whether the Iraqi parliament could find him a successor. It would only show the void of the so-called Iraqi government.
    12) In this context, I won’t be surprised if the US (or at least some hawks in the US government) was trying a coup and Allawi could be their man; at least he seems to think it, given the contract he has signed.
    My fear is that the oil is so important to the US economy and society that they won’t retreat like in Vietnam. In Iraq it matters because it would really mean a defeat for the Americans in this vital part of the world and it would mean that others get the oil.

  20. in that they were foresighted. A
    I realize this was ambiguous : I mean Cheney and Rumsfeld were foresighted, not the Dems.
    Also, I’m sorry for my bad English. Hopefully it’s still understandable.

  21. The idea that Bush et al intended to preserve Iraq by invading it always raised the question of Kurdistan. The US commitment to an, at least, very autonomous Kurdistan was always clear. And it is clear too that the Israelis were involved in Kurdistan in a major way. The Turks knew from the outset that the end of Saddam was going to imply the beginning of Kurdish independence, that was evident from the size of the force employed against Iraq and the first days of the occupation, with the deliberate licensing of looters.
    After that it became clear that Iraq was to be broken up and that Israel was going to pick up the Kurdish piece as a strategic asset. Israel has always had the policy of looking beyond the “nationalism” of the Nasser era and rediscovering the copts, the druze, the Kurds, the Maronites, the Turkmen and the dozens of other fault lines, then deepening them. It is interesting to learn that the US has been earmarking its subsidies to Egypt to strengthen the Copts in recent years.
    After all, the “success” the US had in Afghanistan began, before the Russian occupation, and ended, before 2001, with the breaking up of Afghan nationalism into various ethnic and sectarian pieces. The war there is still, essentially, one in which the Pashtuns promote nationalism and the war-lords maintain their fiefdoms.
    In short the problem with disentangling the US motives is that the dominant one was War, itself: war to feed the domestic voters Mafekings, war to stuff the contributers’ wallets to finance future election cycles, war to furnish loot to pals in the energy biz, war to demonstrate how potent America is, war to drag reluctant allies into becoming accessories with blood on their hands… The idea was to transform the map wherever the steamroller passed, just as had been done with Yugoslavia, another of those artificial states which, in a neo-Wilsonian wave, was shattered into its component and then, sub-component, pieces.
    In such a landscape no centre of resistance could grow up and Israel would be a massive force surrounded by little more than municipalities, into which world a Palestinian bantustan would not seem out of place.
    Wouldn’t Wallenstein have had fun in Iraq?

  22. “Wheat for December delivery surged to an all-time price of $7.54 a bushel. Prices have jumped 110% in the past 12 months and have risen threefold since 2000. Food industry executives warned that meat, poultry and dairy prices would climb in the short term as farmers and processors passed on higher feed costs to consumers-FT24/08/2007”
    Iraqis also eat wheat. Do they have neo-liberal “import parity pricing” now? Or did Bremer forget to do impose that? I don’t know, but I wonder what the effect is on that country, in the condition that it is, of such a huge price rise, if that be the case.
    “It’s all about oil” takes on a new meaning if food is convertable to motor fuel and rises in price, all over the world, to the equivalent price of that commodity, motor fuel, as traded in the USA.
    I never believed it was “all about oil” but in this new sense it begins to have meaning.

  23. “I never believed it was “all about oil” ”
    Ohhh yahh too let….
    The bottom line Iraq not just cradles of civilizations but also a cradle of endless of Goodness and Wealthness…
    Go in deep sleep don’t wakeup till US leaving Iraq………. see you in Haven

  25. America has no choice in good conscience but to keep occupying Iraq “as long as it takes”, to make it a democratic sovereign country, after it invaded by mistake. Perhaps the draft will be needed. Perhaps higher taxes or less spending on Healthcare to fund more merecenaries, .
    Why have an army there still after winning a war you started by mistake 4 years ago one might ask? Well of course it’s because of all the destruction and violence during and after your invasion. I know some complain they are unable to close their eyes and picture what “victory” in Iraq will look like? Isnt the very word “victory” enough for them? Well, hopefully we’ll know it when we see it but if not perhaps it doesnt matter. In fact maybe it’s already happened.
    And its not like you gained control of any dwindling stratgic global resources, or distracted and gained greater control over your own public through war powers. Hell no, how could you benefit with all that violence in Iraq that forces you to keep in an endless state of war and occupation? And how the US elites have suffered for their principles, Americans are bound now to vote for Hillary; who will clearly be America’s greatest anti-war president. Well, either her or an equally anti-war republican, strongly opposed by a fearless congress. And we’ve established that control of oil supplies has nothing to do with it.
    I mean look at the Sudan, or more specificly Darfur. Whats special about the region of Darfur in the nation of Sudan? Only their need and suffereing of course. How did such suffering start and how did it creep up on us so? Anyway it’s clearly all about our deep compassion for the world’s poorest foreigners and desire to share our freedom with them. While the trecherous neocommie Chinese menace is doing (for Pete’s sake) aid for oil deals with the evil Sudanese arab muslim government, the first strike forces of democracy hope to save yet another people Iraq style, maybe even using UN forces as the Chinese might be a bit tricky.
    Thats if the equally evil Al Qaeda insurgentish Iranian Republican Guard can be stopped meddling in Iraq. And no; before you looney conspiracy theorists even ask theres no oil in Iran either, and as Vadim has repeatedly made clear, no chance of war.

  26. Roland, can we please at least stop pretending that the aggression against Iraq was a mistake? It was nothing so innocent as a mistake. It was a crime. So, please find another way to describe it other than as a mistake.

  28. “insurgentish Iranian Republican Guard can be stopped meddling in Iraq.”
    There were many evils in Iraq so, what make evils all come together in the Mesopotamian land Roland?
    And to that one with “”The Three Billy-Goats Gruff”
    Regrettably that academic man with level of understanding comes lower and lower, like “a terrible, ugly, one-eyed troll”

  30. Salah
    I know. I am building it. I don’t see why I can’t or shouldn’t share this progress with the 600 million muslims around the world who don’t speak english as a first language.

  31. Salah
    I know. I am building it. I don’t see why I can’t or shouldn’t share this progress with the 600 million muslims around the world who don’t speak english as a first language.

  32. I do wish they would fix this bug that causes double posts. Do you think Helena can have a word with the NSA.
    I suspect Bevin is on the right track. Germany remained a conglomeration of small states until Frederick and Otto von Bismarck came along. With nobody to stop them immigrants can expropriate good land in the valley of Hebron and the Litani and nobody can stop them. A foothold to the North of Syria turns the whole tactical situation upside down.
    The roadblock at the moment is Iran and I expect that the scenario of Iran and Turkey and Syria forming a trading bloc as an energy supplier to Europe is quite viable. Protection from the US comes from membership of SCO and CSTO.
    Just as you need to think about the 30 Years War in terms of Religion, Nationality, Greed, Power, Opportunity, Money, Ideas, Systems, Change Management and so forth all at once, we need a bit of multidimensional thinking to analyse today’s collapsing empire.
    Today you need to add in resource posession, and globalised communication.
    Oil comes into the equation here because there is an opportunity cost to loss or lack of control of oil and gas supply. If the Americans don’t control it someone else does. If the Americans control it they can control the rate of economic development of other states like China.
    More subtly they can also control where the proceeds of oil and gas sales are invested. Having abandoned the rule of law some time ago and confiscating, freezing and stealing the funds of governments and people they disagree with people are careful what jurisdiction they invest their funds in. European Banks and Governments are furious at the present interference that is happening.
    Taking Brzezinski’s warning that if they don’t get it right at this Presidential Election that the US Empire will go into terminal decline, and looking at the runners and riders on display, a global investor might look at the US rather like some Titanic accident waiting to happen.
    For those among the readers who are among the anointed and are voters in the next election, keep in mind the picture of Constantine Paeleologus the last Emperor of Constantinople who couldn’t find enough fighting men to line the walls when the Turk’s showed up.
    Young Mr Bush’s legacy will be his damage to the the invincibility of the Brand. Coke survived but would you buy Chrysler? History is full of examples of turning points like Teutoburger Wald, Malta and Lepanto, Rocroi and Stalingrad.
    Having upset most of the world over the last six years, ask yourselves where you are going to get the soldiers you will need. Us Europeans are frantically trying to get out of the mess in Afghanistan (depite valliant rhetoric to the contrary) so we aren’t going to take part in hare brained expeditions to Sudan and the Congo. We have read our Xenophon.
    Lets see if John McCain or Rudy Giuliani can figure out how to raise the numbers of infantry they need without a draft. All the air power freaks only need to look at Adolf’s mistake in Halting Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Divisions outside the Dunkirk perimiter and letting the Luftwaffe try to destroy the British Expeditionary Force.

  33. Let’s see if John McCain or Rudy Giuliani can figure out how to raise the numbers of infantry they need without a draft.
    A little chink of reality seeps in there, perhaps, some faint glimmering or adumbration of the bipartisan consensus for Responsible Nonwithdrawal that is soon, as I anticipate, to dawn.
    Responsible Nonwithdrawal need not bring back Conscription in America logically, not so long as there are indigenous Marvins-the-ARVN to defend “Iraq” as the extremist GOP conceives it along “South Vietnam” lines, plus all sorts of hire-purchase Hessians available elsewhere.
    Very far still from their last ditch are the bad guys, even cannonfodderwise.

  34. Shirin it was more than irony, it was an earnestly incredulous exposition of the whole book of fairy tales about the petrochemical wars. Large numbers of supposedly lucid adults claim themselves able to believe these, even if only selectively or one tale at a time. Seriously though the invasion of Iraq was not over WMD but was still NO mistake. A fact that seemed quite obvious to me and many others the world over even at the time it happened.
    Salah, if I understand correctly the Americans claim they want to draw all the worlds evil into Iraq so they can fight it in someone else’s country. Mesopotamia is supposedly like some kind of tethered animal sacrificed to entrap a predator stalking the herd. Only in this case the metaphorical sacrifice actually is someone else’s herd. They call this canard “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here. ” And yes, even if it had suddenly become the objective of the occupation, that’s not exactly legitimate under the Geneva convention.
    Mesopotamia suffers first; but not last, for the managers of these converging global crises there will likely be surplus population everywhere in decades to come. Only thus can the critical “Statu quo” be maintained.
    I am not sure Frank whether or not Obama actually has a chance at the presidency or whether winning it he could turn things around much for his country. The bad guys already being in charge and very far from their last ditch as JHM noted. Is Brzezinski’s declaration of preference really out of the ordinary? If so it presumably is motivated by such grave concerns as Mr B. himself offered.

  35. Obama, turning things around? Are you KIDDING?! Has anyone LISTENED to him? Does anyone but me know anything about that earth shaking, wonderful foreign policy speech he made a couple of weeks ago?
    Is anyone but me aware that one of his plans is to significantly enlarge the military? For what possible reason does the U.S. need a larger military if not to continue to invade and occupy unwilling countries?
    And for those who missed his much-touted foreign policy speech, here it is in a nutshell:
    It’s kind of a two-pronged approach:
    Prong 1: Bomb whomever needs to be bombed (in the Muslim world), including allies who do not deal as the U.S. want them to with their “terrorist” elements. Specifically, if “necessary”, bomb Pakistan, a nuclear state whose pro-U.S. government has a very fragile hold on power (Musharraf is so disliked that during a 2 1/2 week stay in Pakistan last year I could not elicit a single positive comment about him from a single Pakistani), and a very ambitious anti-American extremist element. No thought, apparently, about the possible consequences of bombing this terribly unpopular ally that has a nuclear arsenal, a very fragile hold on power, and a significant extremist opposition. And of course, Iran is a prime candidate for bombing. And of course no apparent thought about the possible consequences of or for that matter the need to bomb Iran.
    Prong 2: Obama has a very, very clear understanding of why the United States has such a poor image in the Muslim world, and it is very simple. It is because people in the Muslim world only hear about the U.S. from its enemies. The solution, therefore, is simple. Simultaneous with the various campaigns to bomb the crap out of whichever Muslim countries it is appropriate to bomb the crap out of, it is essential to wage a massive P.R. blitz in the Muslim world to counter all that bad stuff Muslims are hearing from our enemies, and show Muslims just how wonderful the U.S. really is. Oh yeah, THAT ought to do it!
    But wait a minute! Isn’t that what Dubya has been doing, what with Al Hurra Arabic language TV (a rousing success with a grand total of five loyal viewers), that slick Arabic language youth magazine – what did they call it before it folded a year into publication for lack of readership? Oh yes, and then there was the “Muslims in America” featuring blissfully grinning American Muslims in order to show Muslims all over the world how well America treated “its Muslims” – as if that were the issue!
    Oh yes, and Obama’s own phrase “America’s Muslims” is very, very telling, too.
    Face it, people, the Democrats are not going to save the situation.
    I, for one, am thinking about buying that apartment in Cairo that I should have bought two years ago. Or maybe the property in Musqat. Or maybe I will wait and see what I can find in Tunis next year, but it has got to be soon!

  36. Shirin thanks for filling me in on Obama. We have seen very little of any US Presidential candidates in the MSM down here. The US selection process seems so long, and so public, but also very narrow and not just focused on who can win the party a mandate. That is how parties quietly select leaders for our highly contestable elections here. I clearly haven’t researched the candidates enough online to comment with assurance. But your points about Obama’s Pakistan strategy seem sound enough criticism on first blush.
    Don’t forget you could evacuate to New Zealand. At least we are a friendly plural society and have a functioning representative democracy. Plus it doesn’t get too hot or windy, just warm enough for clothes to dry on the line most of the winter and calm enough for them to stay on the line most of summer.

  37. Roland, Thanks for your replay; you are right what US claming.
    US when went to Iraq they brought with them Iranian’s created and closed alias, they are very Iranians backing ally, and now US as you mentioned US fighting equally evil Al Qaeda insurgentish Iranian Republican Guard so its obvious Iran rushed to Iraq with US forces took control of Iraq specially when Bermer dismantled Iraqi army that open all the doors to all evils invited to come.
    As Mesopotamia suffers, yes this not first time and will not be the last as Mesopotamia land gifted with wealthness and richness never been on other land, Mesopotamia will also had special God attention as most of Prophets came from that land .
    So you need to think why God choose this land?
    Do those people from Mesopotamia have some special thing promote them for God gift?
    So Iraqis proved to be they stand again and carry their massage to the humanity and the history repeat itself again and again.
    “In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Anglo-American world created a vision of the way the world works that lies behind the physics of Sir Isaac Newton, the political economy of Adam Smith, the constitutional theories of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and the biological theories of Charles Darwin.”
    “America start its life with a certain ideological heritage of anti-imperialism,” but all that went off with Bushiest America acting imperialistically in our world so there is no much respects and legitimacy of any law from the Geneva convention.

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