Maliki is opposed Bush/Cheney effort to use Iraq to attack Iran

There is little doubt that a major reason why Bush/Cheney attacked Iraq in part to use that nation as a site of military bases and as a launching place for attacks on Iran. But at the same time,Bush is strongly supporting the Maliki government he installed in Iraq.

So why is Maliki in Tehran saying:

"Iraq today doesn't present any threat as it used to be in the times of the former regime," al-Maliki told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a Sunday meeting between two leaders, according to a statement from the prime minister's office.

"Today's Iraq is a constitutional state based on the rule of law, and it seeks to develop its relations with the regional countries based on cooperation and mutual respect," al-Maliki said.

Before Bush idiotically invaded Iraq that nation as a major counter to the power of Iran in the Middle East. Now, as a direct result of the American invasion of Iraq, the power of Iran has spread to cover the northern Persian Gulf.

Bush is desperately attempting to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that will allow America to keep troops based in that nation for the foreseeable future. (See U.S. Immunity in Iraq Will Go Beyond June 30 and Iraqi officials worry about security deal with U.S..) The intent is clearly to wrap up the agreement, avoid Constitutionally required Senate confirmation of the treaty by defining it as merely an "agreement", and get it into place before a Democratic President is inaugurated in January 2009 so as to tie his hands and prevent him from withdrawing from Iraq.

Somehow this is supposed to permit control of Iran and also terrorists operating in and from Iraq. The only apparent recognizable mechanism for achieving those goals is right-wing hope. Unsurprising because Bush/Cheney routinely substitute hope and bluster for plans.

Bush's legacy in the Middle East is very clearly a diminution of American strength there and a large increase in the regional power of Iran. McCain, with his "stay the course and practice bluster" extension of the Bush/Cheney policies will do nothing to limit Iran's power. Maliki's statements to the Iranians that he will not permit attacks from Iraq into Iran is another example of that lack of the failure of the Bush/Cheney Middle East policies.

Chalabi is out; Maliki said so, Bush followed orders

This is interesting. Yesterday it was reported that the U.S. government has cut off relations with Ahmed Chalabi, the man as responsible as anyone else for the invasion of Iraq and the early candidate put up by the NeoCons and the Bush administration to take over Iraq and replace Saddam.

The Bush administration quickly abandoned their idea of turning the government over to him when it became clear that Chalabi had no base of support in Iraq and could not fulfill his extravagant promises. Instead they sent Jerry Bremer and his American Enterprise Institute kiddy corps to create a government and a free market economy.

Today we get the reason WHY the U.S. has, at long last, cut off relations with Chalabi. It is reported by McClatchy that Maliki told the U.S. to abandon him because Maliki sees Chalabi as a pretender to the throne in Iraq and wants the competition eliminated.

This is more clear than to say that Chalabi was being cut off because he has had contacts with the Iranians. The U.S. government has known that for years, and the State Department and the CIA both objected to the manner in which the Pentagon supported Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress even before the invasion of Iraq because it was believed that he had strong contacts with Iran. There has long been a debate about whether Chalabi is an Iranian agent. So his contacts with Iran are not new news. So why finally cut him off now? The news that Maliki wanted him out makes sense.

The earlier news that the Iranian government has decided to abandon their support for Muquatada al-Sadr and instead support al-Maliki suggests that Maliki's Shiite government of Iraq is strengthening. Since both the U.S. and Iran want to stabilize Iraq, this all makes sense.

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As always, I am not a middle east expert nor an expert on Iraq in any way. The best I can to is keep up with the news and some of the personalities as best I can and comment on the obvious implications. Chalabi has been the Bush administrations Iraqi-on-the-ground since before the invasion of Iraq, so this is probably representative of a very significant shift of power in that sad nation.

"Winning" in Iraq - the lesson of al-Radhi

Let's assume for a moment that there actually is some future gain in Iraq for America that is worth the effort. That is, let's assume that there is a possibility of "winning" in Iraq and it is just that we have not been permitted to know what the true goal that constitutes winning is.

The route to such "winning" must include successful reconstruction of Iraq after the destruction we created by invading. That's obvious, right?

For all the so-called "good news" out of Iraq regarding the schools and hospitals that have been rebuilt, nothing has lasted. Why? An Iraqi corruption judge, Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, has explained to Congress in October, 2007 why reconstruction has not worked. Reconstruction has been totally stopped by the corruption of the al Maliki government.

al-Radhi, who is now seeking asylum in the U.S., stated that a whopping $18 billion has been lost to thieves in "nearly every ministry." (That's not the U.S.-provided Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund.) Corruption, he said, is not just getting worse, but has "stopped" reconstruction efforts.

Clearly a logical, rational person who wanted to "win" in Iraq would take rapid action to deal with the corruption that was blocking reconstruction there.

Rather than dealing with the corruption, the Bush administration has practiced the tactic of shooting the messenger. The Bush administration places a higher priority on preventing the American public from learning that Iraq Reconstruction is being blocked by the corruption of the government of al Maliki than it does on winning in Iraq. They appear to view the reputation of al Maliki to be critical to the reputation of the the Bush administration.

Former State Department officials told Congress earlier this week that, though Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, was able to get access into the U.S., he is not allowed to work and is living hand to mouth. Why has he fallen through the cracks? [Snip]

One of the former officials testified that "a senior State Department official had ordered agency employees not to give al Radhi references or contact him" for help with his asylum.

That might have a lot to do with the trouble that Radhi gave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the administration. Like pointing out that corruption ran rampant under Maliki and that he'd jiggered the system so that corruption judges could not bring charges against any of his senior officials without his approval -- that was a decree on which Secretary of State Rice refused to pass judgment when she testified late last year. Rice also refused to comment on Radhi's many accusations.

It's clear that the the corruption in Iraq is matched by the corruption of the Bush administration. It's also clear that even if there were something that America could win in Iraq, this administration is making no real effort to do so. The conclusion should be that they have decided that since Iraq is unwinnable, all they want to do is avoid looking like they have failed in Iraq. That's the only reason possible why appearance is more important than success to them. They know success is impossible.

Amb. Crocker thought Maliki was going to move slowly in Basra

Ambassador Crocker learned March 21 that Maliki was going to use troops in Basra to bring order to the city, but he thought the plan was to methodically build up troops and gradually increase operations against the various Shiite militias and criminal gangs who have controlled it since the British pulled back from the city. What actually happened was that PM Maliki headed south and as the troops were still arriving he impulsively attacked. The government troops were not yet prepared for the attack they made, and did not expect the resistance they met. So the attack itself was not a surprise to American officials in Iraq, but the way it was done was not what was expected. According to Michale Gordon at the New York Times here is what happened:

The operation indicates that the Iraqi military can quickly organize and deploy forces over considerable distances. Two Iraqi C-130s and several Iraqi helicopters were also involved in the operation, an important step for a military that is still struggling to develop an air combat ability.

But interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. Maliki overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare.

“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”

As the Iraqi military and civilian casualties grew and the Iraqi planning appeared to be little more than an improvisation, the United States mounted an intensive military and political effort to try to turn around the situation, according to accounts by Mr. Crocker and several American military officials in Baghdad and Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two senior American military officers — a member of the Navy Seals and a Marine major general — were sent to Basra to help coordinate the Iraqi planning, the military officials said. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were pressed into service as combat advisers while air controllers were positioned to call in airstrikes on behalf of beleaguered Iraqi units. American transport planes joined the Iraqis in ferrying supplies to Iraqi troops.

The whole operation brings into question the effectiveness of the Maliki government. News reports suggest that this brings into sharp question how well the Iraqi Army is trained. It might. The most difficult and time-consuming training is of mid-level leaders and staff members, and this doesn't look like they performed well. But even well-trained mid-level leaders would be overridden by an impulsive commander who wanted to get everything over with quickly. I'd say that the failed operation should first be blamed on Maliki and top commanders before impugning the training and experience of mid-level commanders and staffers. When the commanders make incompetent decisions, it is hard to say how well the subordinates are performing.

The other question that comes into view is what can the American occupiers of Iraq do that is of any value to America? It is clear that any quick departure by U.S. troops will very probably mean the Maliki government disappears. The very weakness of that government is a pressure on the U.S. to keep troops in Iraq.

But then you have to ask why? What do we get out of staying in Iraq beyond protecting an incompetent government that most Iraqis don't support? Aren't we really just enabling slow, lengthy chaos with no resolution in sight in order to prevent rapid chaos that will rapidly be resolved by the parties directly involved?

Basra combat ending as Iran takes charge; Maliki losing power; Bush irrelevant

After a quickly called meeting to the Iranian holy city of Qom between Iraqi leaders including Mouktada al Sadr and the commander of Iran's Qods brigades, al Sadr ordered his troops to stop fighting Nouri al Maliki's troops. The fighting in Baghdad did stop. The irrelevant American leaders are nowhere to be seen.

The battle for Basra was started without any consultation or coordination with American troops, and the resolution is occurring when the Iranians declare it is time to stop fighting. Here is the report from McClatchy News Service on what happened to cause al Sadr's Sunday statement:

The backdrop to Sadr's dramatic statement was a secret trip Friday by Iraqi lawmakers to Qom, Iran's holy city and headquarters for the Iranian clergy who run the country.

There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members of parliament said.

Ali al Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party, and Hadi al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, had two aims, lawmakers said: to ask Sadr to stand down his militia and to ask Iranian officials to stop supplying weapons to Shiite militants in Iraq. [Snip]

In addition to Sadr, who is in Qom pursuing religious studies, Iraqi lawmakers met Suleimani, said Osama al Nejafi, a legislator on the parliamentary committee formed to solve the Basra crisis.

"An agreement was signed," Nejafi said, referring to Sadr. "Iran was part of the problem and an effective part of the negotiations."

Sadr issued a nine-point statement Sunday saying he would renounce anyone who carried arms against the government and government forces. The statement also asked the government to halt all raids against the Mahdi army, end detentions of militia members who had not been charged and implement the general amnesty law.

To preserve the "unity" of Iraq Sadr called for an end to "all armed manifestations in Basra and in all provinces."

The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost certainly have undermined Maliki - who made repeated declarations that there would be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in their weapons for cash. The blow to his own credibility was worsened by the fact that members of his own party had helped organize the Iran initiative.

So the result is that Maliki has lost a great deal of prestige just prior to regional elections, the opposite of what he wanted, while the Iranians have demonstrated they are the most important power in Iraq, notwithstanding the presence of 150,000 American troops.

Here is Juan Cole's take on what happened:

A parliamentary delegation from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own coalition (mainly now the Da`wa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) defied him by going off to the holy seminary city of Qom in Iran and negotiating directly with Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr and with the leader of the Quds Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Qasim Sulaymani.

As a result of those parleys, Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to stand down, though I read his statement as permitting continued armed self-defense, as at Basra where the Iraqi Army is attacking them and the US is bombing them. Significantly, he calls on the Mahdi Army to stop attacking the HQs of rival political parties. That language suggests that the parties are suffering from such attacks and are worried that party infrasture is being degraded ahead of the October 1 provincial elections. The southern parties have essentially defied al-Maliki and Bush to make a separate peace.

The entire episode underlines how powerful Iran has become in Iraq. The Iranian government had called on Saturday for the fighting to stop. And by Sunday evening it had negotiated at least a similar call from Sadr (whether the fighting actually stops remains to be seen and depends on local commanders and on whether al-Maliki meets Sadr's conditions).

Juan Cole also points to reports from McClatchy that show that the cease fire has not yet taken effect in Baghdad, Basra, Diyala, Karbala, Salahuddin, Mosul, or Kirkuk.

The lessons so far? Iraq is a mess, in spite of the surge, as it has been for the five years since Bush invaded that nation. Al Maliki, the leader Bush supports, is losing power, as al Sadr is gaining it. Iran dominates the entire Iraqi landscape too a degree that would have been impossible without the American invasion and the removal of Saddam.

Bush and Gen Petreaus are nowhere to be seen and are having no significant effect on the current violence in Iraq, although American soldiers have been sucked into the fighting.

The sole remaining purpose for American troops in Iraq now is to support the Maliki government as Maliki loses power; and to continue with a presence in Iraq until after the next American President (Democratic) is sworn in next January. This is intended by bush to give the Republicans the political talking point they will aim at the Democrats: "We Republicans didn't pull out of Iraq! You pulled out of Iraq so you Democrats lost Iraq!" Republican sound bytes will never address the fact that there is nothing there for Americans to win. We're just providing combat troops and aircraft to the maw with no prospect of any gain.

That's that state of disaster that is Bush's War in Iraq today.

The Battle for Basra - II

The New York Times points out that the Battle for Basra between al Maliki's best division (the 14th) and the Mahdi Army (Shiite militia) is not going well for Maliki's troops.

At a news briefing in Basra on Saturday, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul-Kader Jassem al-Obeidi , conceded that the assault had not gone according to expectations. “We were surprised by a very strong resistance that made us change our plans,” he said.

The assault on Basra appears to have been poorly planned and conducted with too few troops. It is not surprising that it is not going well. Cernig at the NewsHoggers writes:

"Maliki's assault on the Sadrists, painted as a general assault on "criminal militias", but somehow managing to leave his SIIC/Badr Brigade allies well alone, is failing badly. Everywhere, the Mahdi Army are holding their own territories and even expanding the fight into new towns and neighbourhoods. Given the unreasonably small force with which Maliki launched his assault, and the estimated 60% penetration of the region's police by the Mahdi Army which has led to widespread desertions, Fester and I are convinced that Maliki had a good idea this would happen. His main purpose in mounting the assault was to ensnare US occupation forces into stepping into the lead, battling Sadr's forces for him and for his SIIC allies. {Snip]

Maliki is now in a position whereby he might - might - be able to win or stalemate the battle with American assistance, but there's no way he can win the political war he's started. He will either fall or be forced to painfully backtrack to negotiate a settlement which will favor Sadr more than it does himself. He's toast and Sadr, despite the many op-eds written over the last four years claiming the opposite, very much isn't."

Cernig's entire post is well worth reading. He also points to the ongoing war in Mosul that has lasted for months now, the flair-ups of violence in Sadr City in Baghdad as a result of this attack on the Mahdi Army in Basra, and the reports that the Turks are shelling the Kurds in Northern Iraq (if such an entity can still be said to exist.)

Then we get the report from Juan Cole:

The Times of Baghdad reports in Arabic that clashes continued on Friday between Iraqi government forces and the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and the provinces of the middle Euphrates and the south, causing hundreds of casualties, including among women, children and the elderly. The fighting also did damage to Iraq's infrastructure, as well as to oil facilities and pipelines, damage that might run into the billions of dollars.

The US got drawn into the fighting on Friday. US planes bombed alleged Mahdi Army positions both in Basra and in Sadr City in Baghdad (as well as in Kadhimiya). Kadhimiya is a major Shiite shrine neighborhood in northwest Baghdad, and the spectacle of the US bombing it is very unlikely to win Washington any friends among Iraqi Shiites.

Despite the US intervention, government troops were unable to pierce Mahdi Army defenses or over-run their positions.

Al-Zaman says that the police force in Basra suffered numerous mutinies and instances of insubordination, with policemen refusing to fire on the Mahdi Army. The government response was to undertake a widespread purge of disloyal elements.

[Hmm. I wonder where fired policemen with combat training and guns could find another job . . . Maybe with the Mahdi Army?]

The Mahdi Army opened a number of new fronts in the fighting, in Nasiriya, Karbala, Hilla, and Diwaniya, as a means of reducing the pressure on its fighters in the holy city of Karbala. Local medical officials reported 36 dead in the fighting in Nasiriya.

The Mahdi Army used its position near Nasiriya to attack government troops attempting to go south to join the effort in Basra, and is said to have inflicted substantial casualties on them.

In Baghdad, Mahdi Army fighters clashed with government forces in 31 districts.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a decisive military victory and rejected calls by southern tribal sheikhs and a large number of Shiite ayatollahs for him to engage in dialogue and negotiation in order to reach a ceasefire and to save civilians who are threatened with a humanitarian catastrophe from shortages of water and food, as well as lack of medical care.

al Maliki seems to have staked his political future on the outcome of this battle with Mouktada al Sadr's forces, and it may well be that he timed it so that the American forces had to intervene on his side.

Since Gen Petreaus has been negotiating with Mouktada al Sadr, this could be Maliki's effort to force Petreaus and the American forces to support him in his internecine political battles for control of Iraq. There are indications that Dick Cheney may have known this was coming, and is playing some more of his behind the scenes politics both in the U.S. and in Iraq. Is this going to be used by Cheney and the Republicans to ratchet up the difficulties in Iraq so that the incoming Democratic President will be forced to either send in more troops to pacify that nation or remove American troops from the scene and thus be politically vulnerable in American politics to the cry of "You lost Iraq"? This goes back to my theory that the Republicans are using the Occupation of Iraq as a kubuki theater play to manipulate American politics, so that what really happens in Iraq is of almost no interest to the Republicans. All that matters is how they can spin it for American voters.

Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization, and the term "Byzantine politics" was invented to describe the way politics in Turkey and the Tigris-Euphrates valley works. The Republicans thought they could predict what would happen there as a result of "Bush's War" and they found disaster instead.

American troops will not be successful in Iraq. They will be co opted by one side or the other in their internecine wars and used to fight for things that have nothing to do with America's interests.

America should have learned that by now. The Bush administration is too stupid and proud of their conservative ideology to become aware of reality.

The Battle for Basra

Al Maliki decided on his own that he was going to take on the Mahdi Army, a militia currently in control of Basra. They have been in control of Basra since the British pulled out last year. So without consultation with the Americans, al Maliki attacked the Sadr militia in Basra using his own militia, one originally established in Iran. This is essentially a civil war between two different Shia militias for control of Iraq. Why now?

The reports coming from Iraq suggest that Moqtada al-Sadr is more popular than al Maliki. He could well replace al Maliki in the next election. We've got to ask why al Maliki decided to attack now.

Bush and the Republicans seen an American election coming in November, and al Maliki is their boy. So in spite of not being consulted in advance of the battle, the American troops are now fighting for al Maliki. Here is the report from today's Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, March 27 -- U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting. [Snip]

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

In Basra, three rival Shiite groups have been trying to position themselves, sometimes through force of arms, to dominate recently approved provincial elections.

The U.S. officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said that they believe Iran has provided assistance in the past to all three groups -- the Mahdi Army; the Badr Organization of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Iraq's largest Shiite party; and forces loyal to the Fadhila Party, which holds the Basra governor's seat. But the officials see the current conflict as a purely internal Iraqi dispute.

Some officials have concluded that Maliki himself is firing "the first salvo in upcoming elections," the administration official said.

"His dog in that fight is that he is basically allied with the Badr Corps" against forces loyal to Sadr, the official said. "It's not a pretty picture."
[Emphasis added]

So although Americans were not consulted in advance, they are now carrying the battle to the Mahdi Army while al Maliki's militia sits on the sidelines.

It appears that al Maliki also has his eyes on the next American Presidential election, as well as on his own next election. By attacking the Mahdi Army now, he might be able to weaken Mudktada's support in the upcoming Iraqi elections, and at the sem time the American troops have to support his attack because Bush is President. Would a Democratic President support such an attack?

The Presidential campaign rhetoric would suggest that the answer is a lot less certain. So if al Maliki wants to be sure of American military support for his side in the civil war between the Shia militias, he had to move now, and do it without asking for military cooperation in advance.

This is a direct result of the idiocy of invading Iraq in the first place, followed by Jerry Bremer's compounding of the idiocy when he disbanded the Iraqi government and military forces. Removing Saddam might have been a reasonable goal (although the cost of the invasion certainly was not justified by that one goal) but Bremer's idea that Baathists were the same as Nazis after WW II and that he was going to deBaathify Iraq the way the allied occupiers of Germany did that country was a fantasy. The occupation of Iraq was not planned and without such an occupation, the destruction of the local government and military was simply the creation of the chaos that is Iraq today.

What used to be the nation of Iraq has been shattered and destroyed, and American troops are now fighting on one side of an Iraqi civil war in which we have no real interest beyond the protection of the prestige of George Bush and the Republican Party prior to the November 2008 Presidential election.

American troops are also in the unenviable position of protecting the Sunni militias and tribes in Anbar Province from the Shiite government of al Maliki, as well as protecting the Kurds in the North from the Shiite government.

So, having destroyed Iraq as a nation, the American military is currently preventing two civil wars from occurring and actively being sucked into taking sides in the third between the two major Shia factions.

For what? Weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and apparently an effort to display to other Middle Eastern nations that America's military was so powerful that if American didn't like how your dictator behaved, they would replace him. In other words, pure stupidity.

Stupidity that McCain wants to carry forward for some unknown reason, perhaps the honor of not retreating from a fight.

So far, 4001 Americans dead in this botched idiocy, Severely wounded over ten times as many, a nation destroyed with uncountable dead, injured and 15% of the population as either internal or external refugees. America's ground forces are of no value anywhere else in the world now, and America's reputation is in tatters.

Welcome to the Bush legacy.

Lieberman criticizes Democrats for criticizing Maliki

Poor Joe. Apparently his Republican "friends" don't trust him enough to keep him informed of their next PR offensive. Within mere minutes of the time Joe Lieberman criticized Democrats for trashing Iraqi PM Maliki, the Republicans released "...excerpts of a new National Intelligence Estimate from our intelligence services that...criticized the performance of the Maliki government in terms that are awfully similar to the things Democrats have been saying."

I can understand why Joe has abandoned the Democrats and gotten cozy with the Republicans. Joe's sole purpose in life these days is to convince Americans to shed American blood fighting in the Middle East to defend the Israeli nation with it's right-wing Likud government and policies, and among Americans only the Republicans are willing to conduct such idiotic wars.

But you'd think that at least the Republicans would keep him in the loop regarding their intended propaganda operations, wouldn't you?

Unless they don't trust someone who has become a traitor to the Democratic Party like Joe has. If he'll stab his previous Democratic friends in the back, perhaps his new Republican friends feel they need to be cautious around him.

Maliki says U.S. troops not needed in Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki states that the U.S. troops are no longer needed in Iraq. Iraqi forces can provide the security Iraq needs. This is his response to the interim report on Iraq just given by the Bush administration.

Of the 16 Washington-established benchmarks in that report, the Bush administration stated that Iraq was failing 8 items entirely and "making progress" on 8 others. Maliki's point appears to be that those benchmarks are a fiction created in Washington, D.C. and have no relevance in Iraq. Considering the clear nearly total ignorance of the Iraqi nation that the Bush administration displays, this is not a bit surprising.

Polls have shown that the majority of the public in both the United States and the public in Iraq want the American troops out of Iraq quickly. The stumbling block is the ignorant stubbornness of Cheney and Bush and the presumed desire of the government of Iraq to keep the Americans there. Now Maliki puts the government of Iraq on the side of those saying get the American troops out.

The only stumbling block now to getting American troops out of Iraq now is to convince Bush that there is nothing further that they can do there. Unfortunately, in bush's simplistic "It's either Black or White." mind, we "lose the War in Iraq" when we decide to leave, and "We have not lost Iraq as long as we are still there."

So what Bush has done is set the decision about what we are going to do with our troops in Iraq as a referendum on "What we have already done with our troops in Iraq." So it doesn't matter that the American military is losing about 100 soldiers to death per month, another 800 to a 1000 to severe, crippling and permanent wounds, and some 40% of all combat soldiers are coming home with severe mental illnesses. They will stay there an fight (according to Bush) until somehow the purposeless invasion of Iraq can be justified.

That is an extremely high price to pay to justify an invasion that every expert outside the Bush administration and the Republican Party recognizes cannot be achieved. The only people now who refuse to recognize that the invasion of Iraq is a totally failed enterprise are those whose jobs depend on not recognizing that fact even as their noses are rubbed in it. Now Prime Minister Maliki has just rubbed their noses in it - Big Time.

There is no further rational reason for American troops to fight and die in Iraq, not when the only goal for their fighting is to return stability to that nation and their very presence is the major destabilizing factor.

A good poker player will tell you not to throw good money into a pot that is already lost.

An effective businessperson will tell you that when a project has failed, you do not use "sunk costs" to justify not canceling it.

A good General will adamantly state that you do not reinforce a failed position.

Yet Bush, Cheney and the Republican Party are saying that we can't leave the failed enterprise in Iraq because of the blood and treasure we have already spend there, and leaving acknowledges failure. Somehow if we don't admit failure, we haven't failed.

The facts show how false, how very hollow that argument is. There is no significant measurement by which the American unilateral invasion of Iraq can be considered to be anything but an utter failure. For the Bush administration to continue to send American troops into the meat grinder does not change the fact that the Iraq expedition is a total failure. Delaying the date of withdrawal does not and will not change that failure into anything else, and history will recognize that Iraq was not and is not America's War. It is a war fought by Bush and Cheney for the benefit of the Republican Party and its hold on power in the U.S. government, nothing else. Just as no serious historian today accepts the position of the Nixon Presidential Library that Watergate was a Coup against Nixon, no legitimate serious historian is going to later define the Bush administration and its highlight event, the unnecessary and distracting war in Iraq as anything but the single most massive failure of American foreign policy to occur since American became a nation.

Maliki has offered an escape hatch. He says that the Americans have don't their job and are no longer needed. It is time we took him up on it and get out, and if Bush and Cheney have their egos too thoroughly involved to accept that their militaristic fantasies cannot be achieved, then we need to remove them and replace them with leaders who serve the American nation, not their own over-stuffed and corrupt egos.

Someone needs to look to America's needs for the future and quit wasting troops, time and money trying to justify a failed past. If Bush and Cheney have to go to get someone to do what America needs done, then so be it.

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From Atrios:

• Video on Impeachment from Bill Moyers show
• Transcript of the video.
• Useful addresses (Politicians)
• FAIRs Media contact list.