SMASHED EGG IRAQ

Two buffoons argue over an egg dropped on the floor. They both claim responsibility as they call it a wonderful culinary creation. The two erstwhile kitchen technicians are former V.P. Dick Cheney and current V.P. Joe Biden. The smashed egg ovum is the political situation in Iraq; the splattered albumen the Iraqi people; the shell fragments Iranian involvement.

Biden, on Larry King recently, said, "You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government." In reality, the current Iraqi elections (set for March 7) are quickly descending into brutality, bombings, and assassinations. An unelected election panel headed by an Iran-linked terrorist barred 500 candidates from running, including numbers 2 and 3 in the main opposition bloc, headed by former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

This is what we get for $1 trillion wasted: thorough Iranian infiltration of Iraq's economic, political, and military institutions, 4,000 Americans dead, several hundred thousand dead Iraqis, more than 2 million refugees, and what looks like a repeat of Afghanistan--rigged elections.

The two actor-buffoons want to argue over this, the current state of the worst foreign-policy disaster in U.S. history? It's a raw, volatile, already putrefying mess.

FORGETTING THE FILM ON THE FLOOR

Allow me, please, to remind you that most of those power brokers who misrepresented the need for war in Iraq are still in positions of power in Washington clamoring for further wars of preemption.

Paul Wolfowitz--"U.S. would be greeted as liberators" in Iraq--was rewarded by George Bush with the position of president of the World Bank where he was hounded out due to ethics violations. He is now visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is heavily influential in conservative national security issues.

Richard Perl--said Iraq had a hand in 9/11--is resident fellow at AEI.

Douglas Feith--disseminated deceptive intelligence that contradicted the consensus of the Intelligence Community re Iraq--teaches at Georgetown University.

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and frequent Fox Noose commentator, who advocated, in 2006, a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, said, re Iran, "Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement." Here is the video link:

http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ThinkProgress/2006/krisiran.320.240.mov

The dogs of war are still loose in the land--the Neocon warmongers (and those Democrats who caved to the war hype) are NOT gone. Many of the same arguments used in the deceptions leading to the war of choice in Iraq--insurgents would welcome American intervention, etc.--are now being unleashed on the American public re Iran. This argument would be like saying that because Americans are critical of our government, we would welcome a Chinese attack to help us.

We should not think history a dirty word. It is true that from the beginning America has been a society not wanting to look at history: we were founded by people seeking to forget their European past. Today, we are nearly amnesiac--"Alzhei-Ameriac" (I just coined this one)--a condition in which, if you attend to the mainstream media, you are supposed to have forgotten the previous 15 minutes--and Vietnam and Iraq.

If we do not resist presentism--an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences--we will not understand the temporal/spatial reality in which we live. It will seem like an always-premiering movie, while forgetting that much of the past/present reality has been left on the film editor's cutting-room floor.

DOCTOR FRANKENSTEIN'S MIDDLE EAST CREATURE

There's a great deal of evidence resulting in belief by American diplomats and those in the intelligence community that the future of Iraq very much depends on what Iran decides to do. The current "peace" in Iraq, which is not very peaceful, is a pause in which hundreds of Sunni men who participated in the U.S.-allied Awakening have been assassinated, either by death squads linked to the Iraqi ministry of the interior or Iran's intelligence service. This leads to the conclusion that the Surge has not created the conditions for permanent peace and the context exists for another flare up of violence, notwithstanding the recent, peaceful elections.

The American war in Iraq has created the conditions for Iran to become the major player in the region and it holds most of the cards in Iraq. Whatever the outcome, and it might be a major confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, it is Iran and its actions in Iraq and the bargain it forges with the U.S. that will be the force largely driving the future of the region.

The U.S. as Doctor Frankenstein has created its own monster. Let's see if it can be contained; or whether, as in Ms. Wollstonecraft Shelly's novel, events have turned and the Doctor has lost control.