Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs: "How Bush lost it
The uprising of Muqtadar's Mahdi Army in 2004 was the definitive nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's dream of ruling Iraq. At the time the Pentagon repeatedly said it wanted to 'kill or capture him'. It did neither.

Muqtada became the man to watch much earlier than his newfound - by American corporate media - prominent role in post-election Iraq. After the bombing of Najaf, the Bush administration completely lost the plot. Then, after the January 2005 elections, the new Jaafari government quickly embraced Iran, received a pledge of $1 billion in aid, the use of Iranian port facilities, and help with refining Iraqi oil.

Sunni Arab regimes like Jordan and Saudi Arabia started to be haunted by the specter of a 'Shi'ite crescent'. A neo-conservative Iraq as a base to launch an attack on Iran disappeared as a mirage in the desert. As the US has to fight a relentless Sunni Arab guerrilla war, it cannot possibly risk alienating the Iraqi Shi'ite masses (more than they already are) with an attack on Iran.

No wonder military historian Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the only non-American author on the Pentagon's list of required reading for officers, called for Bush to be impeached and put on trial 'for misleading the American peop"