[Dialogue] War Deadenders Take Hope: The Surge May Not Be Working, But a US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way

Tue Aug 28 20:33:12 EDT 2007

Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by Huffington Post
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/war-deadenders-take-hope_b
_62005.html>  

War Deadenders Take Hope: The Surge May Not Be Working, But a US-Allawi Coup
May Be On Its Way

by Arianna Huffington

As we all await the Petraeus Report on the state of the surge, we may also
need to be anticipating the Allawi Coup.

I'm talking, of course about Ayad Allawi, longtime C.I.A. asset and former
interim prime minister of Iraq. He's making quite the PR push to get his old
job back, penning an
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR200708170
1579.html>  op-ed for the Washington Post, hooking up with Wolf
<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/26/le.01.html>  Blitzer on Late
Edition on Sunday, and even putting
<http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/08/iraqi-with-cia-.html>  the
high-powered GOP lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers on a $300,000
<http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/4052/subscriptions/splash.html>
retainer.

It says everything you need to know about who the true power holders in Iraq
are that Allawi, who has a "six-point plan" for Iraq that involves replacing
the current Prime Minister, is campaigning in Washington - not Baghdad. He
clearly knows that despite Bush's bathetic paeans to Iraqi sovereignty, the
real deciders in Iraq are not the Iraqi people, but a few dozen folks in the
White House and the Pentagon. They are Allawi's true constituency.

So where does the White House stand on the idea of Allawi replacing current
embattled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki? Well, it depends on whether you
think Mitch McConnell was freelancing on Fox News Sunday when he jumped on
the bash-Maliki bandwagon, calling the
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294657,00.html>  Maliki-led Iraqi
government "pretty much a disaster" - or whether you think he was performing
his familiar function as White House water carrier.

Could the White House be seeing in the blame-Maliki-for-the-disaster-in-Iraq
meme an opportunity replace the sputtering "give the surge a chance" plan
with a "give Allawi a chance" plan?

Let's go to the <http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/26/le.01.html>
Blitzer-Allawi interview to see what such a move would mean for the White
House.

For starters, Allawi told Blitzer that his "six points call for a full
partnership with the United States" and that his "objective is to develop a
plan to save Iraq and to save American lives, as well as, of course, Iraqi
lives, and to save the American mission in Iraq." Full Partnership? Save the
American mission? Surely, music to the White House's ears. And it was good
of him to toss in those Iraqi lives - of course.

So what would an Allawi takeover mean in terms of U.S. troops remaining in
Iraq? "If we talk around the region of two to two-and-a-half years," Allawi
told Blitzer, "I think we are in the right direction." Who needs Petraeus
buying the administration another few months with his report when the Allawi
coup can buy them another two-and-a-half years?

And the White House doesn't have to worry about Allawi knowing his lines -
he's already memorized the playbook. When Blitzer asked him when the United
States might be able to start reducing our presence in Iraq, Allawi
responded with a Bush classic: "As soon as the Iraqi forces are able to
stand on their feet and provide security for the Iraqis I think the
draw-down should start." Ah: When they stand up, we can stand down! Misty
water-colored memories. Being away from Iraq so much, I guess Allawi missed
all those reports about the repeated failure of Iraqi forces to "stand on
their feet."

So exactly how would an Allawi-for-Maliki switch occur? Allawi says he wants
to proceed by "democratic
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR200708170
1579.html>  means." But after being appointed interim prime minister by the
U.S.-led coalition in June of 2004, Allawi had six months to campaign before
the January 2005 legislative elections. He came in third
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4261035.stm>  with 14% of the vote.

When Blitzer asked Allawi who is paying for the $300,000 Barbour Griffith &
Rogers lobbying contract, Allawi wouldn't say. He was only willing to
disclose that the "payment is made by an Iraqi person who was a supporter of
us, of the INA, of myself, of our program, and he has supported this
wholeheartedly, without any strings attached."

As Spencer Ackerman of TPMmuckracker wrote
<http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003990.php> , perhaps it's being
financed by Allawi's old buddy Hazem Shaalan, who Allawi appointed as his
defense minister. Shaalan is currently fighting charges that he stole $1
billion from the Iraqi defense budget (out of a total of $1.3 billion).
That's some way to endear yourself to the Iraqi people.

Allawi and Shaalan are also closely tied to the
<http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003991.php>  Iraqi National
Intelligence Service, which is funded and controlled by the C.I.A. and which
has been a persistent thorn in relations between the U.S. and Maliki.

Meanwhile, we'll have to see whether Barbour Griffith & Rogers' lobbying
will be as effective with administration officials as it has been with
Washington's media gatekeepers. Last week, Bush issued a tepid defense of
Maliki, saying
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070822-3.html>  he is "a
good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him." Hmm, didn't
he say the same thing about Alberto Gonzales? And Don Rumsfeld?

While I was working on this post, I got a call from John Cusack, who had
watched Blitzer's interview with Allawi from Berlin, where he is making a
movie. He was stunned by Blitzer's remark to Allawi, after he had read him
Maliki's quote about Iraq being able to "find friends elsewhere": "Those
words," Blitzer said, "were seen here in Washington as pretty biting, given
the enormous amount of support the United States has provided Iraq over
these years."

"Can you imagine?" Cusack told me. "We invade their country, an invasion
that has resulted in over 100,000 - and maybe as many as 650,000 - Iraqi
civilians dead; 2 million Iraqis having fled the country, with 1.14 million
displaced from their homes within Iraq; and tens of thousands of Iraqis
detained - with many of them tortured. After that 'enormous amount of
support,' Iraqis have the temerity to complain?"

Talk about ingratitude. I bet Allawi would never bite the hand that feeds -
and bombs - him.

Arianna Huffington is the editor of The Huffington Post
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/>  and the author of many books
<http://www.powells.com/s?kw=Huffington+Arianna&PID=32022> , including her
most recent, On
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316166812?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&l
inkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0316166812&adid=1JZC3RG2PHTXHH1NQ0Y3&> 'Becoming
Fearless..in Love, Work and Life'.

C 2007 The Huffington Post

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/28/3454/

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