Forget About Stopping The War, Chalabi Will By: Mark W Adams

Because Congress isn't going to do a thing about it.

David Sirota: "Democrats are not serious about ending the war, or even trying to slow it down."

"Democrats are considering cutting President Bush's $142 billion budget request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year by $20 billion, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said Thursday." - AP, morning of 3/1/07

VERSUS

"Just hours after floating the idea of cutting $20 billion from President Bush's $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad was overruled by fellow Democrats Thursday. 'Our caucus feels strongly that we should go with the president's numbers' on 2008 war costs, Conrad said." - AP, afternoon of 3/1/07

Nope, they'd rather pass a pork-filled defense spending bill than use the power of the purse.

This is the first time, ever, in the long history of the Internet Toobz, that Mark Noonan was right. (Gawd, it sickens me to actually type those words.)

But never fear, our savior will soon be here and all will be roses and liberators.

(No, not Al Gore, geez, calm down already.)

Soon, very soon indeed, Ahmed Chalabi will be able to declare victory and send us home. He's "fixing" Baghdad just like he fixed the intel that got us in there to begin with. Already he's managed to get Sadr's militia to go to ground.

As I mentioned before, Iraqi oil minister Chalabi, the man conveniently in the middle mediating the Baghdad crack down, is now ready to dictate terms to everyone in the region, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and of course us (or rather the American based multinational corporate energy cartel).

Finally we're getting a diplomatic surge thanks to the Iraqis passing the Neo-Con Pinata known as the oil "law," -- which is designed to open up those fields Cheney's Energy Task Force was carving up on the map of Iraq instead of convening the Anti-Terrorism Fask Force before 9/11.

Funny how that worked out. They pass "our oil law," and now we're willing to break bread with Syria and Iran.

Confused? Don't worry, so is Condi. You can name an oil tanker after her, but you can't explain that this is all a feature, not a bug of your Neo-Con Utopia.

Via Iraq Today, through a convoluted chain of links to a Counterpunch article, we glean this fairly coherent assessment of the British withdrawal.

"...But long before then almost all the remaining British forces will be located at Basra air base and act in support of Iraqi military and police units..." the articles continues "...As a result, southern Iraq has, in effect, long been under the control of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the so-called "Sadrist" factions...The Iraqi forces that Britain helped create in the area were little more than an extension of Shia Islamist control by other means."

What is left unsaid, but interpreted nicely by An Arab Woman Blues is that the man she calls "crook, embezzler, CIA/Mossad Iranian agent, Chalabi," and his allies in the Maliki Government -- along with their associated Iranian-backed militias who acted as his body guards when he made his MacArtur-esque return to Basra -- have effectively consolodated their control of the southern Iraq and will have Chalabi's back as he takes the dealer's chair at the greatest poker game of the century.

Chalabi holds all the cards and he's ready to deal. The table stakes are in the hundreds of billions, and the pot includes franchise rights to the most valuable natural resource sell-off in generations.

And you thought Dick Cheney and his merry little band of conspirators didn't know what they were doing. The continued chaos is no longer useful as leverage to get the factionalized Iraqi Parliament to approve privatization of Iraq's greatest treasure -- so just watch as it magically ends once the folks in the Carlyle Group get their piece of the pie.

UPDATE:

"The Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar has obtained a copy of the proposed oil law and has just translated it into English. He discusses the new law with Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time."

democracynow.org