Welcome the new boss, same as the old boss: Saddam without a moustache

I told you guys it was Saddam's moustache that drove Bush bonkers! So now we have come around full circle: (my bold)

The Bush administration has perfected the art of fall-guy selection. The more convoluted the plot, the more credible the fall guy must be. As Lewis "Scooter" Libby was the fall guy in Washington, Premier Nuri al-Maliki will be the fall guy in Baghdad.

The Baghdad conference on Saturday was a derivative talk-fest setting up three committees to prepare the way for another meeting at the foreign-minister level next month in Istanbul. The subtext, though never explicit, is more glaring: it is the absolute US impotence to guarantee security or stability in Iraq, and the desperate search for a way out, now pitting the "axis of fear" (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates) against the "axis of evil" (Iran and Syria).

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General David Petraeus, touted as the miracle worker who might save the occupation from itself, had to admit on the record that in fact the surge won't solve or stabilize anything. To "stabilize" Baghdad to a minimum, the US would have to deploy at least 120,000 combat troops.

But that's not the point. The point is that this gory chronicle of a failure foretold is inevitably slouching toward the "secret" US Plan B - which is none other than installing the new Saddam Hussein: in this case the same old "Saddam without a mustache" (as he is known in Baghdad) Iyad Allawi. Allawi's stellar record - former car-bomber, Ba'ath thug, alleged embezzler (in Yemen), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset, corrupt interim prime minister and "butcher of Fallujah" - could have been penned by a Hollywood hack.

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Maliki will be the fall guy and a new Washington/Green Zone-engineered "coalition", led by perennial favorite Allawi, will usurp his power in Parliament. This coup-in-the-making has been rumored in Baghdad for months. At least this is how the ideal Bush administration scenario develops.

From a Bush administration point of view Allawi's legitimacy is a minor issue - as most Iraqi members of Parliament would rather legislate by remote control from London anyway. In real life the masses, Sunni or Shi'ite, despise them and totally ignore them. The really popular leaders in Iraq are, religiously, Grand Ayatollah Sistani and, politically, Muqtada al-Sadr - whose reach also includes a great deal of moderate Sunnis.

Sadrism, apart from the excesses of a minority, is in essence a nationalist liberation movement. Thus, for axis-of-evil cheerleaders, inevitably it is as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah.

Maliki, the fall guy, is already irrelevant. Any analysis of US imperial designs since the CIA-engineered coup against prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran more than half a century ago reveals the same pattern. If you want divide-and-rule and total domination, who's your man? A clever, charismatic nationalist or a ruthless CIA asset?