Sadr now runs Iraq

* gilliard:

"Can we cut the bullshit and admit that Sadr now runs Iraq."

* hopsicker:

"Based on an "investigation" notable only for failing to interview a single firsthand eyewitness, the National Commission on Terrorism’s 9/11 Report totally ignored the big dirty secret lying at the heart of the 9/11 cover-up... A war for global supremacy being fought through drug trafficking, weapons sales, and the associated money laundering necessary to keep secret armies in the field."

* arkin:

"Semantically, and by the military's official definition, what is happening in Iraq is nowhere near a civil war.

But does it make a difference? Whether Iraq has or hasn't descended into civil war, nothing has changed from last week or last month. It would be a shame if we were blind to that stark reality and instead indulged Washington and New York's time-wasting debate."

* mizgin:

"Sibel Edmonds has published her second article in a series on the Deep State in America and, WOW! Talk about a journalistic version of a JDAM! She discusses Turkey's tight connections with, and control of, a big chunk of the world's heroin market; Turkey's shady dealings with the transfer of nuclear technology and materials to Pakistan and others; and the role of that powerful Deep State front in the US, the American Turkish Council."

* juan cole:

"A surprise for Americans: The most urgent and destabilizing crisis in the Middle East is not Iraq. It is, according to King Abdullah II of Jordan (who will meet Bush today), the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is a major engine driving the radicalization of Muslims in the Middle East and in Europe. It seldom makes the front page any more, but the Israelis are keeping the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in Bantustan penitentiaries and bombing the ones in Gaza relentlessly, often killing signficant numbers of innocent civilians. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Rubin, David Wurmser and other Likudniks who had managed to get influential perches in the US government once argued that the road to peace in Jerusalem lay through Baghdad. It never did, and they were wrong about that the way they were wrong about everything else.

In fact, September 11 was significantly about the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, and as long as the Israelis continue their actual creeping colonialization of Palestinian land while they pretend to engage in a (non-existent) "peace process," radicalism in the region will only grow. Polls taken in the last few years have shown that 64 percent of Egyptians expressed satisfaction with the Mubarak government, but only 2 percent had a favorable view of US foreign policy (i.e. knee-jerk pro-Likud policy) in the Middle East. That is, the argument that authoritarian government breeds radicalism is either untrue or only partial. It is the daily perception of a great historical wrong done to a Middle Eastern people, the Palestinians, that radicalizes people in the region (and not just Muslims)."

* juancole:

"The NYT was told by somebody in Washington that Hizbullah has trained between 1,000 and 2,000 Mahdi Army militiamen.
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There is a real possibility that this report is disinformation "leaked" by the Cheney/Wurmser axis in order to forestall a move to negotiation with Iran and Syria over Iraq, which the Baker-Hamilton Commission will likely recommend."

* kathleen reardon:

"Sounds good, but years of studying negotiation tells me that common ground can be a useful start for talks among hostile adversaries, but it is rarely a productive end point and is even an ill-advised, unreliable starting one when the other side has proven its penchant for deception.
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I don't have Tom Hayden's connections, but over the years I've learned to smell a rat - to read the tea leaves if you prefer. Would it be all that surprising after years of a war based on lies, executed with shocking ineptitude, causing thousands of deaths that a civil war might now be seen by the current Bush Administration as a viable path to a "win" of sorts? Would it be beyond the current leadership, as abhorrent as it sounds, to turn lemons to lemonade in Iraq - to let a civil war get firmly underway before admitting to its existence so that in its blood and dust the post "Mission Accomplished" years of failure, to use George Bush's words, might be, with a little help and a new library, reduced to a mere "comma"?

It's unwise to forget with whom we're dealing here. This administration has amply demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice nearly all but itself. The chief players are not beyond lying and they have two more years to go. Call this view paranoid, an unwelcome, party-pooping conspiracy theory, or just plain out-to-lunch, but a heads up on Iraq in the midst of post-election jubilation is surely needed if we're to avoid being made fools yet again."