Boots and Sabers: Looks like Owen fell for "another Rovian trick" in Iraq

On Sunday Ol Lady Owen Robinson at Boots and Sabers crowed about this sign of "progress" in Iraq:

Iraq's top Shi'ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political leaders announced on Sunday they had reached consensus on some key measures seen as vital to fostering national reconciliation.

Foreign affairs experts and B&S commenters including Joe and Kevin Binversie agreed this was progress. (Curiously, Joe seems to believe that the winning of the peace in Japan and Germany lasted "decades" as violence lingered on. The Brawler has no idea what Joe is talking about -- is he thinking about the much-hyped Nazi "werewolves" cited by disgraced former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Joe: there was no meaningful resistance, organized or otherwise, to the US occupation in Japan or Germany. The US maintained a military presence in those countries to check communist expansion, not to suppress resistance in those countries. And there was no meaningful "violence.")

The Brawler  -- who tends to be suspicious of "good news"  coming out of Iraq, particularly if its timed in a manner that fits in with the administration's talking points -- gently suggested that Owen was jumping the gun a bit.

And, shocking no one, the Brawler has been proven correct once again.

From Time Magazine:

Late on Sunday five Iraqi politicians, representing the country's Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish constituencies, announced a deal to allow some former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party to return to government jobs, which has been a key demand of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker called the announcement a "positive and encouraging message."

But a day after signing the deal the country's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, announced that the Sunni bloc that walked out of the government August 1 still had no plans to return. "Our previous experience with the government has not been encouraging," he explained, "and we will not go back just because of promises, unless there are real and tangible reforms."

Meanwhile, commenting on Washington Post 's coverage of a GAO report that shows the Administration is blowing its benchmarks on Iraq, Spencer Ackerman at Talking Points Memo observes:

On Monday, President Bush gave a speech praising a recent accord among the Shiite and Kurdish political parties of Nouri al-Maliki's government -- which has no Sunnis, who, along with the Sadrists, have withdrawn from the cabinet -- pledging to play nicer with the Sunnis. (Tariq al-Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni political entity, signed the accord, but hasn't brought his party back into the government and the other Sunnis doubt Maliki's sincerity.) The cost-free accord for Maliki smelled a lot like an illusory political deal intended to bolster the Petraeus/Crocker assessments next month to Congress. Sure enough, the GAO finds that Bush's public statements about political progress by the Maliki government are entirely contradicted by internal studies:

An internal administration assessment this month, the GAO says, concluded that "this [Sunni] boycott ends any claim by the Shi'ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity." An administration official involved in Iraq policy said that he did not know what specific interagency document the GAO was citing but noted that it is an accurate reflection of the views of many officials.

Of course, the Pentagon is saying the report is overly pessimistic. The Brawler supposes Owen Robinson is among that shrinking part of the electorate still gives credence to the people who brought you tales of Jessica Lynch's heroism.

Comments

[capper]

Brawler-

I certainly hope you type these posts with one hand tied behind your back, otherwise it wouldn't be fair to the Ol' Lady.