Is the Bush administration considering a coup d’etat in Iraq before the end of the year, in a desperate effort to salvage its war? It’s not outside the realm of possibility. Like JFK in 1963, who—faced with a notoriously corrupt Saigon regime and a growing Viet Cong insurgency in Vietnam—gave the green light to topple and assassinate President Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, President Bush might give a wink and a nod to the CIA, the U.S. military, and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to get rid of Iraq’s current regime. The Diem coup didn’t go well. Considering how unlikely it is that Bush has even heard of Diem, I doubt he’s learned that lesson.
More and more, it’s beginning to look like the end for Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. When he took office in the spring, Maliki was touted by the Bush administration as Iraq’s savior. In fact, behind the scenes, the Midland Machiavellis in the White House and their proconsul in Iraq, Ambassador Khalilzad, wheedled and maneuvered Iraq’s corrupt political class into giving Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari the heave-ho and installing Maliki in his place. Like the other too-clever-by-half stratagems of the Bush people in Iraq, the installation of Maliki created more problems than it solved, and it now looks like Maliki has utterly lost the confidence of the White House.
Question is, what are they going to replace him with—and when? According to recent reports, the United States appears to have given Maliki a deadline: two months.
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