Searching For The Truth

A Murdoch Paper Prints Edmonds' Story?

Sibel Edmonds' story has been suppressed for years and is subject to a gag order in the United States, but a Murdoch-owned British paper apparently finally took her up on her offer to tell all if the story was printed unaltered.

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

The Sunday Times did not name all of the names, but others are doing that.

The story is explosive. It paints a picture of cooperation between Israeli, Turkish and Pakistani intelligence to steal US nuclear secrets that were distributed to other countries through the A.Q. Khan network. Members of Congress and High level officials at the State Department and Pentagon are implicated.

Larisa has more. So does Justin Raimundo.

So far, the U.S. press has not touched this.

Given the source, I would suggest that a bit of caution is indicated.  It is a safe assumption that there is no way a Murdoch paper would print this story if it was not part of the extended neocon agenda.  By doing so, Murdoch is giving up people like Perle, Grossman, Solarz and many other powerful figures who have been very helpful to the neocon cause. In other words, this is a high-stakes move, which suggests that other significant events are pending or are likely to take place in the near future.

Was this intended as a "limited hang-out" for the neocons, sacrificing only a few, because something is threatening to expose the whole enchilada shortly? Here is a thought- How many deep dark secrets does Musharraf know that could embarrass the neocons should they decide to turn on him, as appears to be the case?

Middle East Peace: The Time is Right

Philip Weiss in his excellent blog describes a palpable level of fear (some may say paranoia) that was expressed by some supporters of Israel at a recent Philadelphia area event in response to the recently published book on the Israel Lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt.

The fear may seem misplaced at first because Israel is in a stronger position today politically and militarily than it has ever been.  It has the unqualified support of President Bush, Congress and all of the major 2008 Presidential candidates.  Saddam's Iraq has been destroyed, Arafat is dead, the Palestinians are on the brink of civil war, Sunnis and Shi'ites are killing each other throughout the Middle East and Iran and Syria are on the defensive.

On the other hand, there are several signs that Israel's position is likely to weaken on several fronts in the years and decades to come.  Israel has demographic issues; its enemies are likely to narrow the qualitative military advantage that it presently enjoys (this has already started to happen with the Syrian acquisition of advanced Russian anti-aircraft systems); and the Mearsheimer/Walt book likely portends a decline to some extent of its political support in the United States.  The decline of the U.S. Dollar makes American support for Israel more expensive, and as energy prices continue to rise its enemies and potential enemies in the region will gain strength.

Strategically, it is clear that now is the time for Israel to negotiate and finalize peace agreements with Syria and the Palestinians.  Its negotiating position is unlikely to get any stronger by waiting, and it is quite likely to weaken in the years to come.  Israel will never have a better opportunity for long term peace on advantageous terms than it has right now.

The Ron Paul Revolution

Ron Paul won the first two Republican debates, according to many polls. He is leading the Presidential Pack on YouTube and other social networking sites. His positions on the issues seem to be attractive to ordinary voters, but are anathema to the big government corporatist fat cats that have controlled the Republican party the last few decades.  They have made some clumsy attempts to ban him from upcoming debates, while the mass media has studiously ignored him, hoping no doubt that he will fade away.

If the trajectory continues, Ron Paul will be the 2008 election cycle's Howard Dean- a true grass roots candidate that the establishment can't afford to have win. As Dean was cut down by "the scream" that was endlessly played on network news for two weeks until his candidacy was broken, the long knives are being sharpened for Ron Paul. He was set up for a staged attack by Rudy Giuliani in the South Carolina debate, when Giuliani's microphone was mysteriously kept alive when it was Paul's turn to speak. But Paul is fighting back..

Lake Jackson's Paul stirs GOP presidential race

   

Quote:

On Thursday Paul held a news conference with the former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, Michael Scheuer, who retired in 2004 and wrote a book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. The book suggests that U.S. policies in the Middle East have contributed to retaliation by the terrorists. Paul challenged Giuliani to read the Scheuer book.

IMO, Ron Paul won the exchange with Giuliani in the minds of the average observer, hands down. No reasonable person thinks that we were attacked because "they hate our freedom."

   

Quote:

He told a reporter from Kuwait, who had suggested that part of the U.S. problem in the Middle East was its "blind support" of Israel, that he had a "good point." Paul added that "I could talk about our blind support of Saudi Arabia." He went on to say that members of Congress have been "intimidated by the influence of AIPAC." He was referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the top pro-Israel lobbying groups in the capital.

He will be chastised in the press for this as well, but it will only make him more popular with the common voter.

How Will They Destroy Ron Paul?

   

Quote:

We all know the drill by now. Whenever a politician with character and principles throws his hat in the ring the media descends on him like feral hounds on a pork chop. It’ll be no different with Paul. The only difference is that we should all be aware of what’s really going on. Did you see the Republican debates? Paul won hands-down. He stood out in a crowd of colorless toadies and became an overnight sensation on the internet. In fact, an ABC survey showed that Paul won the first debate with an 85% majority; while C-SPAN showed him at 70%. Maybe the stats are just a fluke of internet voting, but it’s sure made the boys in the boardrooms nervous. Right now, the right wing think tanks are probably buzzing like a hornets nest. They have their work cut out for them. The sleeves are rolled up, the ash trays are full, and America’s best propagandists are working out the details for a full-blown assault on Ron Paul. They want to take him down now, before he can cause any more trouble.

Ron Paul will be on Maher tonight.  I'll be on his website making a donation.

Discuss this post on Strategytalk.org

The New York Times

This article from the Los Angeles Times reports on the continued decline in profitability of the print media, and in particular The New York Times.

Newspaper companies' results decline

New York Times' profit fell 26% to $23.9 million, or 17 cents a share, from a year earlier. Revenue fell 2% to $786 million.

I'd like to think that at least some of The Times's financial problems are due to its abject failure over  the past several years to reliably report the truth to the people who pay to have it delivered.  This is the paper that tolerated Jason Blair, fed us the cooked intelligence on Iraq care of Judy Miller and that continued to imply guilt for the three Duke lacrosse players long after it was clear to anyone closely following the story that the accusations were a vicious hoax by a deranged prostitute.

It is bad enough to be continually propagandized by the mainstream media without having to pay for it as well.  If you currently paying for a Times subscription (as I used to), trust me, there are better sources to keep yourself well-informed.

Peak Denial

A recent National Geographic article by Brian Handwerk touts Italian oil executive Leonardo Maugeri's new book The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource, in which the author expresses the cornucopian view that much of the world is still largely unexplored for oil and there are plenty of new oilfields waiting to be discovered.

I'm not an oil industry insider, but I think there is plenty of freely available evidence that Maugeri's book is at best irrationally optimistic and at worst intentionally deceptive.  Consider these facts:

1. Multinational oil giants have been investing billions of dollars in recent years for nonconventional deep sea and polar exploration.  Producing oil from such environments is much more expensive (and therefore less profitable) than is conventional production.  If these companies believed that significant conventional oil deposits are yet to be discovered, it would be in their best economic interests to find them and produce it rather than to rely on nonconventional sources. 
2. Similarly, the industry would not be expected to invest as it has been doing in additional production capacity for heavy oils and syncrude if there was a belief that large conventional deposits of light sweet crude oil are yet to be discovered.   
3. Cornucopians like Maugeri and Daniel Yergin predict that consumption of refined products such as gasoline in the United States is destined to increase significantly in the decades to come as it has in the past.  However, even at today's consumption levels there is a shortage in current refining capacity, particularly in the US.  Why has there been little to no investment or proposed investment in additional refining capacity by commercial energy interests?  The apparent answer is that those in the industry know that it would be an unwise investment because the volume of crude oil that will be available in the future for refining is not going to increase substantially.
4. Perhaps the most telling evidence that Peak Oil may be fast approaching is the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was obviously justified on false pretenses, and US efforts to gain influence in energy rich Central Asia.

    Why do people like Maugeri and Yergin spread obvious falsehoods?  If the public at large became convinced that a long term energy shortage was imminent it would change their economic behavior.  The debt leveraged world economy, which requires at least nominal economic growth to be sustained in order to avoid collapse, would be threatened.  Industries and entire economies would be expected to. This will no doubt eventually happen anyway, but our corporate and political leaders would like it put off for as long as possible while their own contingency plans are put into place.

Discuss this article at Strategytalk.org

More of The Same

Larisa Alexandrovna details the highly questionable circumstances under which the mainstream US media has been lapping up the White House's latest allegations against Iran...

Propaganda Extravaganza

At least Powell's speech and Blair's "dodgy dossier" attempted to source their allegations.

Would you buy a used car from these people?

Saddam's Execution: A U.S. Psyop?

I commented very early on that Saddam Hussein's controversial execution appeared to have all the earmarks of a U.S. psyop operation designed to exacerbate enmities between Sunnis and followers  of Iraqi Shi'ite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.  At the time I wrote:

So how does a crew of open Sadrists get into Saddam's presumably elite hand-picked execution squad?  And how do they get away with such rude misbehavior?  And how does an unofficial video get made and released?

If I didn't know better, I might suspect that the whole thing was staged to make the Sadrists look bad and to deepen sectarian divisions in Iraq.  Especially since they did it on the first day of Eid al-Adha.

Writer Mahdi Darius  Nazemroaya has written an excellent article making the same point.  Nazemroaya points out:

The execution of the Iraqi leader was carefully timed to occur during a sensitive time for Muslims. The execution fell during Eid ul-Adha, a holy day for Muslims. The date of the execution is perhaps one of the most compromising signals that the execution was indeed a psychological operation (PSYOP) launched by the United States. 

The execution date was deliberately chosen during a sacred period for Muslims to exploit a divide between Shiites and Sunni. This sacred day was marked on Saturday, December 30, 2007 by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and was observed a day later on Sunday, December 31, 2007 by Iraq’s Shiites.

Al-Sadr himself himself denied that he or his followers were involved in the execution.  The following quote is an extract of an interview of al-Sadr that was published in the Italian journal La Repubblica, translated from the Italian by Strategytalk's own parvati_roma:

Caprile: It has been said that amongst the crowd watching Saddam’s execution you too were present.  Is this true?

Al Sadr: “This is absolute rubbish. If I’d been there they’d have killed me too. As for Saddam, I certainly shed no tears for the man who massacred my family and tens of thousands of my people. But if it had been up to me, I’d have had him executed in a public square so all the world could see.”

Caprile: Even if you weren’t there, can you deny that the execution room was full of your men?

Al Sadr: “No, those were not my men. They were people paid to discredit me. To make it seem I was the person really responsible for that hanging. The proof lies in the fact – just listen to the audio – that when they recited my prayer they left out some essential parts. A mistake that not even a single child in Sadr City would ever have made. The aim was to make it seem Moqtada was the real enemy of the Sunnis. And they succeeded.

Al-Sadr is the greatest threat to the U.S. agenda in Iraq at this point not because of the strength of his militia (it is poorly trained and armed, and took a severe beating in its only engagement with U.S. forces in 2004) but because of his political opposition to two of the main U.S. political goals in Iraq and  the fact that his public support and popularity is rapidly increasing.  He is an Iraqi nationalist who opposes foreign influence in the country and supports a strong central government.  This means he wants U.S. troops out as soon as possible, with no military bases left behind.  It means that he is suspicious of Iranian influence in his country and of groups (such as SCIRI and its Badr Brigade militia) that have close ties to Iran.  It also means that he will oppose long term foreign influence over Iraq's oil industry.  Although al-Sadr has not officially announced his opposition to the proposed hydrocarbon law or the U.S. backed proposal to amend the Iraqi Constitution in order to effectively implement the law, it is quite likely that he does oppose it in its present form.  The U.S. is certainly acting as if he opposes it.  It has been  urging Maliki to purge the government of Sadrists in favor of Shi'ites who belong to more compliant factions such as SCIRI.

The U.S. is fearful that the Sadrists will forge a political alliance with Sunni nationalists that share their agenda for a strong, independent united Iraq that is free from foreign influence.  Al-Sadr has had discussion with Sunnis to this effect, and has offered an alliance with Sunnis that are willing to condemn Sunni radical groups  and the oppression of Shi'ites under Saddam:

Caprile: In any case, the war between you and the Sunnis goes on.

Al Sadr: “It is true that we are all Muslims and we are all sons of the same land, but they must first distance themselves from the Saddamists, from the radical groups, from Bin Laden’s men, as well as repeating their “No” to the Americans. All we’re asking is for the ulemas to accept these conditions of ours. They haven’t yet done so.”

To many ordinary Iraqis, Muqtada al-Sadr represents a better way forward than what is being offered by more radical elements or by the political parties that have been coopted by the U.S. and Iran.  There has been a groundswell of political support for him, especially among rural Shi'ite tribesman in southern Iraq.  If new elections were held today, the Sadrists would substantially increase their representation in the Iraq parliament, dealing a final death blow to the U.S. agenda.

The U.S. is accordingly left with a stark choice: Accept defeat, or eliminate al-Sadr.  The Saddam execution was part of a strategy to marginalize him, and it had some initial success.  However many Iraqis, both Sunni and Shi'a,  are wising up to the real state of affairs in Iraq.  If the U.S. tries to physically eliminate al-Sadr, it will likely light a brushfire of widespread resistance in southern Iraq and in Baghdad.  If this happens, the stakes in Iraq will have been raised considerably.

Discuss this topic at Strategytalk.org

WikiLeaks

This interesting article from The Sydney Morning Herald describes WikiLeaks.org, a wiki for potential  whistleblowers around the world that supposedly promises complete anonymity and foolproof encryption:

Website offers whistleblowers chance to go global

THE internet could become even more difficult for governments to regulate with a new website, Wikileaks, promising to provide a safe haven for whistleblowers to upload confidential documents....

Comparing themselves with the leaker of the Pentagon papers that damaged the Nixon administration and eroded US public confidence in the Vietnam War, Wikileaks' creators say they will uncover unethical behaviour by developing "an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis".

Great concept, but if I knew of any significant government or corporate wrongdoing I would certainly want to know who is paying for the storage and bandwidth for this project before I risked my neck posting anything.

Although the website says its primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet Bloc, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East

There is a good clue as to what interests may have been involved in setting this up.  Somehow I doubt the identity of posters will be safe from the likes of the NSA and CIA, although I hope to be proven wrong about that.

The Dance of the The Puppet

According to Missing Links, former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, widely derided by a broad cross section of Iraqis as a Western puppet and roundly rejected by the voters in the last election, now  has renewed optimism about his future  prospects given that Washington has confirmed that Prime Minister Maliki is on "borrowed time." 

So much for liberating Iraq from a dictator and sowing the seeds of Democracy.

Sadr Interview

If you are interested in what is really going on in Iraq right now, read this rare interview of Muqtada al-Sadr that was published in La Repubblica, translated from the Italian by Strategytalk's own parvati_roma.  Particularly interesting was this portion:

Caprile: It has been said that amongst the crowd watching Saddam’s execution you too were present.  Is this true?

Al Sadr: “This is absolute rubbish. If I’d been there they’d have killed me too. As for Saddam, I certainly shed no tears for the man who massacred my family and tens of thousands of my people. But if it had been up to me, I’d have had him executed in a public square so all the world could see.”

Caprile: Even if you weren’t there, can you deny that the execution room was full of your men?

Al Sadr: “No, those were not my men. They were people paid to discredit me. To make it seem I was the person really responsible for that hanging. The proof lies in the fact – just listen to the audio – that when they recited my prayer they left out some essential parts. A mistake that not even a single child in Sadr City would ever have made. The aim was to make it seem Moqtada was the real enemy of the Sunnis. And they succeeded.

I have suspected for some time that the Saddam execution video was a clever psy-op designed to splinter the Sadrists from their fellow Iraqi nationalist moderate Sunnis.  There has also been much speculation on whether the worst excesses of the Shi'a militias (and the bombing of the Golden Mosque) could have been the result of covert infiltration by US controlled forces.  Sadr seems to confirm both in this interview.

It seems that the US occupation forces don't want Sadr to be able to get his version of events out, since they arrested his information officer yesterday.

Dahr Jamail has written an interesting article on how some of the Southern Iraqi tribes (made up of both Sunnis and Shi'a) have begun to actively resist the occupation.  These tribal groups are Iraqi nationalists or patriots, being concerned about Iran as much as they are the US.  They also have connected the dot between the US occupation and the death squads:

A political analyst in Baghdad, who asked to be referred to as W. al-Tamimi,   told IPS that he believes occupation forces have been working in tandem with   death squads. "We have been observing American and British occupation forces   supporting those death squads all over Iraq, but we were still hoping for reconciliation."

Al-Tamimi said the sheikh of his tribe, which is both Shi'ite and Sunni, was   "under great pressure by the tribe's young men to let them join the resistance."

The long feared second front in Iraq seems to be underway.

Why is the US Hostile to Al-Sadr?

The immediate cause of the present developments in Iraq seem to stem from the plan that was described in National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley's  November 8, 2006 secret memo (leaked to and reported on by The New York Times) to President Bush.  The memo articulated a strategy to politically and militarily neutralize nationalist Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr by fracturing the ruling Shi'ite coalition sponsored that has long been sponsored by Ayatollah Sistani and replacing it with a new coalition made up of SCIRI and Sunni parties.  A.K. Gupta has written a terrific article that outlines the many possible outcomes (none of them good) to the Hadley strategy. 

The bigger question, though is: Why does the U.S. wants al-Sadr out of the picture?  His forces for the most part are not part of the active insurgency.  Of the two major Shi'ite militias, his is the least well-armed and has the fewest links to Iran.   While "rogue elements" of his Mehdi Army have been blamed for  some of the sectarian violence, the worst of the Shi'ite death squads has been the special police commandos of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which since mid-2005 has been staffed with members of the Badr Brigade militia that is part of SCIRI and is heavily supported by Iran.  As Gupta reports:

Badr operates death squads under the banner of the special police commandos. Beginning in 2004, U.S. forces organized, trained and equipped the police commandos, drawing from Hussein-era security forces, to create a neo-Baathist militia and death squad that would hunt Sunni insurgents. Under the Iraq government that took power in April 2005, Bayan Jabr, a former high-ranking commander in the Badr Brigade, took control of the commandos as head of the Interior Ministry. Jabr ousted Sunni personnel in the commandos, putting in place up to 3,000 Badr militiamen, and they quickly began a reign of terror against Sunnis in general.

The worst of the death squad activity also suspiciously coincided with the arrival of former US ambassador John Negroponte (infamous for being behind much of the death squad activity in El Salvador during the Reagan administration).  Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar has also hinted at this:

The Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group implemented by the Pentagon is regarded by Sunnis and quite a few Shi'ites as being the mastermind of some of the car bombings, assassinations, sabotage, kidnappings and attacks on mosques fueling the civil war. The "Salvador option" has developed into the "Iraqification option". US-trained death squads in Iraq are not much different from the death squads in El Salvador during the 1980s - subordinated to the same "divide and rule" tactics. This is the "civil war" dirty secret: let the Arabs kill one another with the US posing as "victims".

Al-Sadr, while defending his militia's right to defend itself against hardcore Saddamists and Sunni extremists that view Shi'ites as apostates, has made it clear that he deplores the bulk of the death squad activities. 

Why then is al-Sadr viewed as such a threat by the United States?  Could it be the fact that, unlike SCIRI, he opposes the presence of US troops and rejects the division of Iraq into semi-autonomous federal states?  Could it be that he opposes passage of the proposed hydrocarbon law?  Is it because he is amenable to a coalition with moderate Sunnis, which could end the sectarian strife and make the presence of US troops harder to rationalize?

It seems like the Hadley plan is to co-opt SCIRI away from Iranian influence and to ultimately place its leader al-Hakim in power in Baghdad.

Discuss this article at StrategyTalk.org
 

Moderates Must be Heard

Arnaud deBorchgrave wrote this article detailing Israeli concerns about Iran and how Bibi Netanyahu has been using his influence in Washington to press for an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu then said Israel "must immediately launch an intense, international, public relations front first and foremost on the U.S. The goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel."

The article also quotes Oded Tira, who is the the chairman of Israel's Association of Industrial Manufacturers as saying:

As an American air strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party, which is conducting itself foolishly, and U.S. newspaper editors."

Leaving the propriety of the idea that US newspaper editors and political candidate may be influenced to urge war against Iran for the benefit of Israel entirely aside, who are the elements that are most in support of an attack?  Former General and prospective US presidential candidate Wesley Clark (who is of Jewish ancestry himself) let it slip recently to Arianna Huffington that he has concerns against the push for an attack on Iran. 

"How can you talk about bombing a country when you won't even talk to them?" said Clark. "It's outrageous. We're the United States of America; we don't do that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the military option is off the table -- but diplomacy is not what Jim Baker says it is. It's not, What will it take for you boys to support us on Iraq? It's sitting down for a couple of days and talking about our families and our hopes, and building relationships."

Clark also let it slip that the pressure against candidates urged by Tira is already in full swing, despite the fact that many Israelis have concern about the wisdom of an attack.

When we asked him what made him so sure the Bush administration was headed in this direction, he replied: "You just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers."

The balance of power in Washington between the right wing hard line neocons and more moderate elements may have changed somewhat, but the Israeli hard liners still seem to have the ear of monied Zionists in New York who seem to have the most influence on US policy.  The more moderate Israelis seem to be frozen out of the process.  The risks of a backlash against Israel in the wake of a failed attack on Iran (and there are so many ways it could backfire miserably) are considerable.

According to the present National Intelligence Estimate, Iran is in fact years away from having the possibility of building a nuclear weapon.  Its economy, although growing, is a tiny fraction of that of the US.  It military budget as a fraction of that of the US is even smaller. All indications are that Iran is being portrayed by the hard liners as a much more clear and present danger than it actually is.

All of Israel and in fact the Jewish community at large has a tremendous stake in the outcome of whatever decision is made.  I would suggest that the community as a whole should make its voice heard to the hard liners and opponents of an attack on Iran should speak out and let their voices be heard as soon as possible.

Discuss this issue at StrategyTalk.org 

Iraq Update

Alternet's Joshua Holland has written a very informative two part article that chronicles the long-planned grab for Iraq's oil resources.  The second part of the article casts some light on what has been happening in the Iraqi parliament over the past few weeks and perhaps why the US media has been ramping up the invective against Shi'ite Iraqi nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr.  Holland cites a BBC article reporting on the passage of a new law that would give greater autonomy to the regions and weaken the central government.  Al-Sadr's group and the two biggest Sunni groups (a nationalist political alliance is the worst nightmare for the US and Big Oil) boycotted the vote, which the US may have felt was necessary to cement support of the SCIRI Shi'a faction and the main Kurdish parties for the soon to be introduced hydrocarbon law.

Holland thinks Big Oil's plans are on the verge of going awry..

It's possible that the administration and its partners badly overplayed their hand. Iraq's new government stands on the verge of a complete meltdown, faced with a crisis of legitimacy based largely on the fact that it is seen as collaborating with American forces. Overwhelming majorities of Iraqis of every sect believe the United States is an occupier, not a liberator, and is convinced that it intends to stay in Iraq permanently.

..and it seems like al-Sadr is the biggest fly in their soup right now.  If you Google "Sadr" and "hydrocarbon law," however, don't expect to find many articles from the US mainstream press reporting on what could be one of the more important developments in US  economic history in the past 50 years. There is no shortage of news articles, though, in which al-Sadr is labeled as an "extremist" and the leader of the "most dangerous" militia, who needs to be "brought under control."  The timing is rather obvious, isn't it?  The US considers Arab nationalists enemies, whether it is Saddam,  Assad or al-Sadr, because one can't be a nationalist and a reliable lapdog at the same time.

The Post Weighs In

The Washington Post has weighed in on the Bush plan to "surge."  Interpreting a US mainstream media source on the Iraq situation is a little bit like reading Pravda back in the 1970s.  You can't take what is written literally, but through careful analysis you may be able to figure out something you didn't previously know.  The article cryptically states:

Responding to skepticism about Maliki within some parts of the administration, the White House may make a deeper involvement in Iraq contingent on Maliki cracking down on militias and death squads while also undertaking bold political initiatives and developing a wider economic plan, U.S. officials say. The addition of new U.S. troops, for example, may be phased over several months and conditioned on Iraq following through on promised political reforms, the officials said.

"Deeper involvement" could mean Maliki survives, or it could mean that the US will send in more troops in an attempt to rout Sunni insurgents that have been encircling Baghdad.  "Cracking down on militias" means using Iraqi government forces to attack Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, but it doesn't necessarily mean a similar crackdown against al-Hakim's Badr Brigade militia.

"Bold Political Initiatives" means dumping al-Sadr, forming a new coalition that will be compliant with US goals, and amending the Constitution to give oil companies more assurance that the contracts they are awarded will hold up under future legal scrutiny.  A "wider economic plan" mainly means passing the hydrocarbon law that will hand control over Iraq's oil resources over to US/UK oil companies.

The centerpiece of the political plan is the creation of a national reconciliation government that would bring together the two main Shiite parties with the two largest Kurdish parties and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. The goal is to marginalize Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the largest and most powerful Shiite militia and head of a group that has 30 seats in parliament and five cabinet posts.

In reality, al-Sadr is feared by the would-be Western hegemonists not because he is an extremist, but because he is an Iraqi nationalist who desires a unified Iraq that is free from foreign occupation and influence.

To ensure participation of Sunni moderates, the Bush administration is pressing the Maliki government to take three other major steps: Amend the constitution to address Sunni concerns, pass a law on the distribution of Iraq's oil revenue and change the ruling that forbids the participation of former Baath Party officials.

"Amending the Constitution" in fact has as much to do with the concerns of Big Oil as it does with the Sunnis.  It seems that the existing Constitution never clarified whether it is the central government or the  regional ones that have the power to award oil development contracts. 

It remains to be seen how the Constitution could be amended to simultaneously satisfy SCIRI, the Kurds and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party.  The Kurds have already awarded some oil development contracts on the own, and the Kurdish regional government is working on its own energy law that is in conflict with the proposed national hydrocarbon law.  They want autonomy.  SCIRI has previously expressed a preference that the regional Shi'ite government in the south control the oil resources of Southern Iraq.  These positions are antithetical to what the oil-poor Sunnis want, which is central government control of the oil industry and an even distribution of the revenue throughout Iraq.  Their position is far more consistent with that of al-Sadr, who supports national control of the oil resources and revenue.

More on al-Sadr and the Proposed Iraqi Hydrocarbon Law

The heat against Muqtada al-Sadr has obviously been turned up in the US media within the past few weeks.  Al  Sadr's militia is unfailingly labeled as "extremist," as opposed to the presumably more "centrist" Badr Brigades, even though the latter has reportedly been more heavily involved in the sectarian violence against Sunnis than the Sadrists have.  The more cynical among us may take this as a sign that the US has reason to believe that al-Sadr is going to stand in the way of the proposed new Iraqi hydrocarbons law.  Al  Sadr recently met with Ayatollah Sistani and it is a safe bet that the proposed law figured prominently in the discussion.

Several weeks ago, the United States reportedly tried to arrange to have SCIRI and other compliant political parties leave the United Iraqi Shi'ite list in order to form a new coalition with Sunni elements in the Iraqi parliament.  Sistani reportedly used his influence to prevent this from happening.  At the same time, however, the Sadrists were exploring a coalition of their own with Sunni parties that share the Sadrist’s nationalist goals of having foreign military forces leave Iraq and for a strong central Iraqi government that has complete control over future oil revenues.  Reporter Pepe Escobar, writing in Asia Times, explains the significance of this:

The crucial development in the next few weeks is Muqtada's fine-tuning of a stunning Shi'ite counterpunch to demolish once and for all the US-created pro-sectarian strategy: a nationalist, pan-Islamist, anti-occupation coalition of the Sadrists and the neo-Ba'athists,plus any other religious or secular anti-occupation group. Transcending the Sunni/Shi'ite divide, this would preempt any threat of all-out civil war - not to mention decide the fierce Shi'ite family feud between Hakim and Muqtada in the Sadrists' favor. No wonder US Senator John McCain wants to "take out" Muqtada as much as the Pentagon does.                        

A recent interview with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on PBS NewsHour seemed to confirm that the United States is preparing to escalate hostilities against the Mehdi Army if the Sadrists stand in the way of the passage of the proposed hydrocarbon law:

MARGARET WARNER: Now, you've been speaking with some of those leaders. They've come to Washington in the last couple of weeks. After those discussions, how feasible does this idea of a new moderate coalition within the Iraqi government sound to you, that is one that splits off the more radical Shiites, the ones allied with Sadr, and the more moderate Shiites go in with the Sunnis, some Sunnis and Kurds? Is that feasible?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, the definition is: Are these people who are now willing to have a plan for national reconciliation -- which means hydrocarbons law, for instance, the sharing of resources -- and are they willing to stand by the Iraqi armed forces, the Iraqi prime minister when he goes after the people who are...

There has been a virtual media blackout in the American press when it comes to the proposed hydrocarbon law and the significance of its introduction within the Iraqi parliament, which is reportedly scheduled within the next few days. 

"Victory in Iraq" is a phrase that is being used constantly with little attempt to explain what form such a victory may take.  However, passage of the hydrocarbons law, which would essentially obligate Iraq to hand over control of its oil resources to Big Oil for the next 30 years would likely constitute such a victory in the eyes of the US political and industry leaders who pushed for the Iraq invasion in the first place.

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