Needlenose

investment=occupation to Iraqis
writer of above LAT story dies
sabotage still happening
Army or tool of repression
Juan Cole on constitution
Cole on keeping Iraq together
Cole on gangsters
Cole on Alawi
Cole on 5 grabbing power
http://www.juancole.com/2003_09_01_juancole_archive.html#106343198705092813
http://www.juancole.com/2003_09_01_juancole_archive.html#106282910033525552

Governing Council pushing limits
NYT on factions
private security

Billmon on exit strategy
NYT in Iraq/Afghan messed-up peace (Afghan as future of Iraq?)
WaPo on Iraq security

Onion — 73% unable to believe
Calling the American people’s enormous shit-belief capacity “one of the cornerstones of our democracy,” U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) stressed that it is the patriotic duty of all citizens to grant our leaders the benefit of the doubt with regard to their shit.

“If the American people are no longer willing to believe this shit, who will?” Kerry said. “Somebody’s got to take this shit at face value. Otherwise, why are we even doing all this shit in the first place? I am truly saddened by the lack of faith that the citizens of this country are willing to put in my shit, as well as that of my esteemed colleagues. We must repair our society’s fraying trust in the shit of our elected officials, or you would not believe the kind of hardcore, heavy-duty shit that will come down.”
Kay update?To begin answering Green Boy’s challenge to me about whether any effort to bring democracy to Iraq and/or preserve its borders is hopeless — an argument he initially made nearly four months ago — I’d like to expand on a point that I raised yesterday:

Although the Shiites are the majority, the bulk of the military leadership/training was among the Sunnis (as currently being evidenced by more effective guerrilla attacks).

If/when the U.S is forced out of Iraq, the Shiites face a potential civil war against a Sunni population not willing to accept its minority status. Given the latter’s greater tactical skill, the Shiites aren’t a lock to win that war — so giving the Americans a long rope to fight that battle for them makes sense.

Doomsayers such as G. Boy and Steve Gilliard tend to assume that Iraq’s various ethnic/religious factions are on an irrevocable collision course with the U.S., each other, or both — but that analysis doesn’t give the groups enough credit for thinking strategically.

The reason full-scale civil war hasn’t erupted yet is that factional leaders haven’t satisfactorily answered the question of what comes after the short-term payback they may be looking for. If the Shiites rise up against us, for instance, the Americans will almost certainly be driven out of Iraq — but are they then in a position to keep the more militarily skilled Sunnis from reestablishing their control over the country?

In fact, the diverse interest groups in and surrounding Iraq (from Sunnis and Shiites to Kurds and Turkomen, the repatriated exiles, neighboring countries like Iran and Turkey, and the U.S. itself) are all playing a high-stakes, real-life game of Survivor. None is strong enough to “win” singlehandedly, so they’re all eyeing the other parties suspiciously, scheming up ways to leverage disagreements among them in their own favor, figuring out what their own endgame might be, and trying to identify when to “make their move.”

So far, it’s been the weakest players who have been forced to take dramatic risks early. The Sunnis, for example, know that the deck of any future Iraq will be stacked against them unless they play their strongest cards now — hence their leading role in the guerrilla resistance to the occupation. Having been derailed early from the back-door route to power they once pursued, Ahmed Chalabi and his fellow exiles are making an end run to seize the spotlight and increase their viability.

However enormously we’ve screwed up so far, the U.S. is still an influential player in this game . . . and it won’t be “voted off the island” as long as enough other players think they can benefit from keeping us around. As a result, there are ways that the U.S. can use this reprieve to gain at least some of its desired end results, if it starts to play intelligently and realizes what compromises it has to make regarding some of its more unreasonable goals.

NYT on Fallujah bombing
AP on bombingJoshua Marshall at Talking Points Memo cuts right to the chase, following up on his quasi-scoop (or the London Times‘ scoop, really) of a week ago.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday that we shouldn’t expect to hear anything, ever, about the facts behind Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Which means there weren’t any.

Which means that half the U.S. army is tied down for the foreseeable future occupying a country that posed no threat to ours whatsoever.

Do you see why I say that competence is the real issue? Lies aside, this is a blunder of genuinely historic proportions.

Update: With this announcement, Rice’s statement . . .

“I would not count on reports. I suppose there may be interim reports. I don’t know when those will be, and I don’t know what the public nature of them will be.”

. . . may be the capstone on this legendary post by Billmon, which I have previously celebrated on this weblog.

If it isn’t, the capstone will likely be some remark made by a Bushite official (perhaps Dubya himself) forced to comment on Rice’s admission.

…weren’t you first with the ‘Bubble‘ analogy? Of course, maybe it’s just stems from the fact that great minds think alike…

…courtesy of the Repugnican Party.
See what happens to wrong-wing rhetoric when the nutters come to power? All talk of free trade and free markets comes to an end – they’re too busy dishing out pork! Earlier on, I pointed out how Dubya uses subsidies as a tool to reward his backers – check out this article that belies all the crap the GOP blathered about ‘the family farmer’ and ‘food security’ – 71% of the subsidies of the ‘Food Security Bill’ went to a few big corporate farmers!

Even more helpful is a handy guide put out by the Environmental Working Group that breaks down the subsidies by recipient, by crop and by state.