Boil, Boil, Toil, and Trouble

Juan Cole (link via The Alternate Brain):

Al-Hayat has a long interview with an "informed Iraqi source" who is close to US officials in Iraq. He maintains that the US officials there were astounded that the United Iraqi Alliance did so well, and that they felt helpless and resigned as the process unfolded. He says that they are now asking privately if the US shed so much blood and treasure in Iraq to help fundamentalist Shiite allies of Iran take over Baghdad.

How foolish to be surprised by the success of the Iran-allied UIA. What a fundamental lack of understanding of Iraqi politics it exposes. Not the politics of the deposed tyrant, Saddam, but the politics of the people, which were always simmering under their leader’s inflexibly restrictive tyranny, which kept them from boiling, for good or ill.

Now they boil. We did that. And we’ve no right to be astounded by the outcome.

Fixer comments:

Tell me who, aside from the Repub true believers, had any doubt this was going to happen? … It's more and more apparent that the Bush administration was played for fools, by Chalabi, by Iran, and by the Shi'ites in Iraq. Worst of all, they played themselves, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that could only end in failure.

Our swindled leadership in turn conned the media, who also let themselves get played for fools, by Bush administration assurances, by their cooked intelligence, by their somber presentation to the UN, delivered by the man most trusted among their ranks. And then the media turned to the task of swindling the American people, more than half of us when this folly began, who dutifully bought the snake oil to heal the wound left festering since 9/11.

Like the dog in a house where abuse bleeds down from the top, exacted and passed on to the next in line, to the one just slightly weaker, we have watched dad hitting mom, and mom slapping the oldest, and the oldest pinching the youngest, who’s now started kicking us each time he lashes out about his own mistreatment. The Bush administration will not learn integrity from this massive sucker-punch. They will continue to pass on the bill of goods to the media, who will pass it on to (the majority of) the electorate, because we’re the last stop on this chain of deceit and treachery.

They best remember, though, that even the most obedient dog will eventually bite a vicious master.