Here's How to Lose in Iraq...

As if we hadn't figured it out, Nouri shows us how to lose in Iraq.

First, raid the offices of your political enemies. It worked on Sadr, ha? In 2004 and 2008, ha? Awakening Councils acting up, ha? Shut em down. The resultant street riot will, you know, give Americans an opportunity to earn the Bronze Star. Can't get that sitting on a base. Besides this, raiding your nominal allies has the added bonus of confusing the hell out of the Sun Young Moon falange. "A new boldness" among the armed groups is okay, right? We paid them to be bold...

All good, until someone starts blowing up children in Shiite neighborhoods. Then we're back to square one, only with fewer boots on the ground.
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Show Me the Oversight...

Poor Nouri Kemal al-Maliki. All the problems he contends with on a basis daily. Iran, Turkey, the PKK, Muqtada al-Sadr, now two American administrations with separate demands and expectations, and those pesky Iraqi accountants...at least the accountants he can fire.

I'm particularly fond of the Times' surreptitious kick to the Iraqi balls, noting again and again the Iraqi "endemic corruption," -- how that's just how things are in "that part of the world." And the USG should know. We ourselves keep misplacing our collective wallet over in that part of the world.

In China, the penalty for bribery is death. This accords with my latent puritanical character. (There will be Virtue, or the Terror!) For the land that birthed Hammurabi to go soft on oversight is just a damn shame.

If fraud were not pie for Maliki, he wouldn't be firing his fraud monitors. Reckon it's time we got those poor Iraqi number-crunchers each a scimitar...
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SOFA King

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

This lovely little bit of clusterfuckery brought to you by the letters M, F, and DOOM. Now what to make of this? Coup for BHO? Possibly. The disintegration of the SOFA could be played a number of ways:

Bushco could say it's a validation of not just the surge, but the original invasion of Iraq, in that this fledgling new government is flexing its muscles. This Iraq would obviously be on its way to being a beacon of democracy and a strong US ally in a vital area of the world. Basically you say we don't want to stay there any longer than the Iraqis want us. Drop some line about remaining troops being withdrawn in accordance with security blah blah blah and the whole time hook and crook your way into making sure those permanent bases stay, well, permanent.

Walnuts could say it's a validation of his surge policy, in that the Iraqi government--given the necessary breathing room to actually operate--can now begin the arduous tasks of blah blah blah see, I didn't really mean a hundred years.

Both of these, though, really run counter to the Bushco goals, don't they? That whole permanent strategic fixture helping to surround China, thumb our noses at Russia, and secure that black gold for ages to come? Bit hard when the Iraqis are so rudely rejecting our magnanimous offer of American boots on the ground until the Second Coming, eh?

So Bushco et al play this down as much as possible. Acknowledge it as a sign of progress but blah blah troop levels will be determined by the facts on the ground and we will not sacrifice American security for yadda yadda.

BHO, though, due to the Reaganesque teflon on his semantics, gets to win this point, so long as he plays it right. I say he parries any of Walnuts' predictable "we'd've suffered defeat if we'd've listened to him" attacks and talks about the future. (Suitable, that, since it was Walnuts' own response to BHO's "I wouldn've gotten us into this mess in the first place") He's already using the point to press the need for withdrawal. How hard does one press this, though? There's boons and pitfalls for all sides in this one. Should be interesting to watch play out.

Sunshine and freer time, kiddies. More later.

"I consider this case closed."

K:

Meant to get at you about Liebs: clearly an object of scorn round here. I was giggling bout this the other day. Turns out Ned Lamont was not responsible for Joe's website crashing back in the summer of '06. Investigators determined Joe was. "I consider this case closed," says the Senator, and well, he knows better than anyone that there's nothing there to discover! And dismissing the federal investigation as "old news"! A classic!

Suppose we should believe him about future attacks, weapons in the sand, cybercriminals and islamofascists then.

Pictures later.

Aye, I saw the McCain tax-relief bit in the paper. I figured he was just making nice with his right flank. "See, I get it. Any problem, no matter how nutcrushingly vast, can be solved with a tax cut. Right fellas? Fellas?" Ergo all problems will be solved when we have no taxes.

Okay but for real, could he extend the tax holiday to state gas taxes? Because that, smoking and gambling are the only sources of revenue left for PA to plunder. Man, and let's not even talk about how the 400-year-old system of townships up here leads to giant property tax bills, de facto segregation, shit schools and permanent provincialism. Or how about the Philadelphia city income tax. That's right fukkas, the city takes 7 percent of my pay, and feeds it to black mafia. Let's not talk about Imam Shamsud-din Ali, a.k.a. Clarence Fowler either. Or Kenny Gamble. One day.

Nevertheless, my first response was to come up with a tax that solves problems, Northern liberal that I be, and I got one.

Pass a windfall oil tax and prorate it to our commitment in Iraq. 2% cut of industry revenue -- not profit -- for every 140,000 soldiers serving. When we drop to 70,000 troops, the tax drops to 1% of revenue.

Here's the neat part. An escalator built-in to the tax for our continued presence, viz.: one-half percent for every six months. So the tax can't be whittled down to a manageable burden; it sticks around until we're done. And it gradually de-escalates as we pay down the cost of the war.

Charts 'n' graphs: Table 1: Gradual de-escalation, 2008-2013.

Basically, everyone who says that a windfall oil tax can't pay for anything is part right. Taxing profit won't pay for shit; thass feeding off the ass-end. And who wants to do that? Take the food from out they mouths, on the other hand, and you can do things. You can't pay for universal health care. But you can cut into the deficits we've been running. By 2013, the Dark Steer Windfall Tax will be chugging along at 5% of industry revenue, estimated at 2 trillion dollars. So 100 billion. Not a lot, but a start.

I strongly dislike this campaign; I think if Obama runs to his right he's going to look phony. This is the lesson of the "bitterness." And he's doomed to run to his right. I grow weary of crystalballin'.

So, a message to the candidiates: my endorsement is up for grabs, in case any one of you has a brazole big enough to implement the Dark Steer Windfall Tax...

C'mon...who's got the ten-and-a-half?

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