Iraq: A different coup?

That Iraqi PM al-Maliki is somewhat on the nose with the powers-that-be can be seen from the criticisms and barbs directed at him.

He is now confronted with another twist to the "story" of Iraq - as Arianne Huffington in The Huffington Report reports:

"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 op-ed for the Washington Post, hooking up with Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition on Sunday, and even putting the high-powered GOP lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers on a $300,000 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."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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