Iraq War: New Show in Fantasyland

[Notice: Light posting until July 12 or so.] This "transition" government show in Iraq is something that could have been produced by Fox News.

We have a government, installed by the United States with the barest pretence of domestic legitimacy.

They are dependent for their security - very close to 100% dependent - on American troops and soldiers for hire.

It's headed by a guy who used to do terrorist jobs for the CIA in Iraq.  Which is at least marginally better than the Iranian spy Chalabi who was the Pentagon's (i.e., Rummy's) favorite candidate.

Meanwhile, the Iranian spy's nephew is going to establish the credibility of the new "sovereign" government by having a trial for Saddam Hussein and other members of the former regime.

No doubt Bush and Karl Rove hope it will provide helpful campaign footage.  Of course, they thought that about the "Mission Accomplished" extravaganza on the Abraham Lincoln last year, too.  And they were right: except they didn't think it would be campaign footage for the Democrats!  (Remember, Bush and Rove did manage to lose the 2000 presidential campaign.)

For Bush's election prospects, it might have been more clever to have the new "sovereign" Iraqi government postpone the Saddam trial until after the November election.  The crimes with which Saddam is being charged go well back into the 1980s.  Descriptions of the ways in which US administrations collaborated with his regime, including winking at the use of "weapons of mass destruction" (chemical gas) against Kurdish villages, will inevitably appear alongside the trial news, however much it may pain our obedient mainstream media that they won't be able to avoid reporting that.

Then there could be some very embarassing questions about just what responsibility senior government officials have for torture carried out in Iraqi prisons. 

The Iraq War is a big deal, involving a lot of troops, in a highly sensitive and highly visible region of the world.  Bush and Cheney and Rummy and the whole crew let their arrogance and their contempt for law (American and international) push them into a situation where it takes heavy doses of Oxycontin to avoid noticing their responsibility for some terrible things.

And it sounds like Rummy has officially admitted - or at least documents officially made public by the Pentagon make it clear - that he authorized the use of torture, although allegedly he reversed the order later on.  It reminiscent of Nixon's famous comment on the Watergate tapes about how they could pay hush money to the Watergate defendents, "but it would be wrong."