I guess we don't like the democratically chosen al-Maliki anymore?

So we are pushing Allawi in on a 'parliamentary coup'? What happened to the respect for all those purple-fingered votes?

Steve Benen of Talking Points Memo quotes the Chicago Tribune:

"There's been a definite change in tone from Washington, and the momentum and drive to support Allawi will increase," said Jaafar al-Taie, a political analyst involved in the new coalition's campaign. "It's not only that Maliki must go, but that the whole system must go."

According to Allawi's published program, the parliamentarians would not only appoint a new government but also suspend the new constitution, declare a state of emergency and make the restoration of security its priority. [...]

"Even when Bush tried to modify what he said, he did not go so far," said Izzat Shabandar, a strategist with the Allawi bloc. "We know that Bush from inside would like to replace Maliki, but he did not say it clearly. He chose to say it in a diplomatic way."

Update: Digby:

We are clearly attempting to stage a coup and put a strongman/puppet in charge of Iraq to "restore security." For some reason nobody seems worried that this will fuel more terrorism and hatred against America around the world since we will be seen as pulling the strings. In fact, the administration seems to want the world to see that we are pulling the strings. Apparently, they still believe, even after throwing away all the good will built up over 50 years and proving themselves to be abject failures at occupying and reconstructing the country we invaded for no good reason, that it is a good idea for the United States to be throwing its weight around even more in the middle east.

Al-Maliki and al-Sadr enemies?

BFF? Or joined together to prevent Allawi from gaining power?

Muqtada and Maliki apparently want the world to believe that they are no longer friends. They have not become enemies, however; at least not yet.

[snip]

Maliki's job is very much on the line. Apparently the decision-makers in Washington have decided to get rid of him if he does not bring stability and security to Iraq by June. That, anyway, is what officials at the US Embassy in Iraq told him in March.

Maliki therefore wants to create a bogyman in the form of Muqtada whom, he will tell the Americans, only he can tame. In short, Maliki wants to extract more aid and support from the US by playing up the "specter" of a "radicalized" Muqtada.

[snip]

So even the White House does not make too much of Muqtada's walkout. So Maliki, to use Muqtada's words in his January interview, is "maneuvering". But for what? Time? Legitimacy? For a new round of friendship with Muqtada when all else fails?

Ultimately, what unites Muqtada and Maliki is much more than what divides them. Both want a theocracy in Iraq. Both want the Americans to leave - although with different degrees of urgency. And both would dread a post-Maliki regime because most probably it would mean the return of former premier Iyad Allawi, who has promised to launch a deadly war against sectarianism, militias and Muqtada.

His record speaks for itself; he launched a bloody war against the Sadrists when he serving as prime minister in 2004. Sectarian politicians like Muqtada and Maliki dread the coming of the secular Allawi, who has frantically been trying to put together a coalition and convince both Arab regimes and the US administration to give him another go.

Muqtada, who has referred to Allawi as "the unbeliever who will soon succeed Maliki", sees Allawi as waiting for an opportune moment to strike at him and Maliki. He said, "We represent the majority of the country that does not want Iraq turned into a secular state and a slave of the Western powers, as Allawi dreams to the contrary."

As far as Muqtada and Maliki are concerned, they are willing to work with the devil - or each other - to defeat Allawi.

Georgie, Dearest

I'm sure we will be seeing a host of these types of books for decades. Here's one of the first: "The Occupation of Iraq," by Ali A. Allawi, published by Yale University Press:

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

- The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

- Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party - from government, school faculties and elsewhere - left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

- An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

- The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

- Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.

- The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.