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Scenario III: Circumstantaial Evidence

Posted on Friday 28 March 2008

  • Scenario I: Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Malaki using his Iraqi Army engages the rogue elements of Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army setting off a full scale Shiite Civil War in Iraq.
  • Scenario II: Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army engages the Iraqi Army of Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Malaki setting off a full scale Shiite Civil War in Iraq.
  • Scenario III: American President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney [recent visitor to Iraq] initiate active hostilities against Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army claiming it is an operation of Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Malaki and his Iraqi Army in hopes of bringing the Iraq War to some successful end – re-electing a Republican President in the U.S., insuring the oil flow is in  the hands of "friendlys,"  and finding a place for themselves in history.
What is the evidence that Scenario III has to be included in the possibilities?

  1. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator John McCain, and Senator Joe Lieberman were in Iraq for week-long visits.
  2. Basra, the center of the fighting, is the oil export hub for Iraq’s oil.
  3. Earlier this week, John McCain made a foreign policy speech reaffirming his committment to the War in Iraq.
  4. General David Petraeus is scheduled to go before Congress to discuss dropping troop levels in Iraq [and Bush is signalling that we aren’t going to do that].
  5. When this melee started, Dana Perino come out with this fanciful interpretation that the hostilities were evidence of the strength of the Iraqi Army and that the "surge was working":
    DANA PERINO: This is an Iraqi led and Iraqi initiated operation. And this is what we’ve been wanting to see the Iraqis do is take on more responsibility…
    The surge created new opportunities and in fact created many more Iraqi Security Forces…
    So I would characterize it as a bold decision — precisely what the critics have asked to see in Iraq, more movement by the Iraqi Security Forces.
  6. On the third day [yesterday], President George W. Bush made this same claim in a speech to soldiers at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
  7. Last week, Karl Rove was on O’Reilly saying a prelude to such a scenario:
    "… the creation of the democracy in the historic center of the Middle East with the third-largest oil reserves in the world. If we have a functioning democracy in Iraq, that’s an ally in the war on terror, a counterweight to the mullahs of Iran and to Assad in Syria, this will create a very hopeful center of reform and energy for reform throughout the Middle East."
  8. Today, we read in the Washington Post:
    U.S. Armor Forces Join Offensive In Baghdad Against Sadr Militia
    Americans Appear To Take the Lead As Iraqi Units Wait

    U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting.
  9. It is a classic Bush/Cheney ploy to do something like this.
  10. I am not generally a paranoid person seeing plots behind the scenes when they aren’t there.
It’s my story and I’m sticking to it…

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