Thursday, April 03, 2008

Did Cheney Authorize Maliki's Basra Blunder?

The Axis of Weasels

When Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Baghdad two weeks ago, I was left wondering what that was all about. When Cheney leaves his crypt in Washington it's not to say hi, it's to get things done.

Cheney hits Baghdad. A week later Maliki tries to hit Basra. Maybe you believe in coincidences but this one's a real stretch. Imagine Maliki has Cheney sitting in his office and simply omits to tell him he's planning on attacking Sadr's militia next week. What are the chances?

Let's put things in perspective. Israel got the White House's blessings before it tried to crush Hezbollah. Swing and a miss. Fatah had the Bush regime's backing to launch civil war against Hamas. Strike two. And then Cheney flies into Baghdad just days before Maliki blunders into Basra? The Bush regime has quite an appetite for fomenting civil wars in the Middle East and the Iraq fiasco certainly fits the pattern. Strike three, you're out!

The Bush frathouse has to be the most militarily incompetent administration in American history. There's never been a bigger gang of screwups. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Hadley, Feith, Perle, Bolten, Gonzales - a cabal of utterly boneheaded mutts. It's no accident that Afghanistan is in the mess it's in today. The Iraq debacle was no accident. It took very rarely-witnessed levels of incompetence to botch these adventures so totally and behind each and every one has been the face of that bald bastard.
The latest news has it that Maliki, whose administration initially welcomed Sadr's truce offer, has instead decided to keep going, even reinforcing the existing 30,000-strong Iraqi army force with another 6,000 soldiers. It sounds like Maliki is being pushed to try again - or else.

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